Am I a better parent?

Am I a better parent?

I guess I believed with each generation we gain more experience and education. Learning from our collective past is supposed to be an evolutionary advantage of our species. This I hope has lead me to a deeper and more enlightened parenting style. I can dream. I hear stories from my Mom how she was treated as a child and how my Gram was treated and how my Great grandmother sacrificed all for her son’s future and I wonder am I doing the best I can?

When my Mom was growing up she dreamed of college and being more. My Gram worked hard and raised my Mom to have confidence and educated her at good private schools for elementary and high school. When it came time for my Mom to go to college she was accepted into a wonderful Catholic College called Mundelein in Chicago. She worked hard for a years to afford the tuition and put every cent she made into a savings account. Being the trusting daughter and needing a second name on the account she placed her mother’s name on her account. She was filled with hope and promise for her bright future. She heard stories from her Grandmother Anna of how Anna had been hand picked by a local doctor to be a nurse but her parents pulled her out of school and said that she was needed to be the cook for all the farm hands and the family. Anna’s hopes of a less subservient life were dashed and she never graduated from High School and was trapped. She instilled in my mother the desire to educate one’s self. 

When the time came to enroll for classes, she filled out the forms and quit her position at the Johnson and Johnson factory where she measured the circumferences of cotton balls monitoring quality control and the machines. This must have been a mind-numbing task. First day of classes rolled around and she got her text books, paid the first installment of the tuition with her hard earned saving and set off for a new path and a bright future. Classes exceeded her hopes. New doors were being opened everyday for this blue-collar working class woman. She would not only be the first woman to graduate from High School but the first woman to graduate from College. All the new ideas and knowledge not only fed her mind but her soul. She loved learning and still does. After the first month, the second installment of her tuition was due. She went to the bank to get the money and was horrified by the sight of her account balance. Apparently her mother went to the bank and cleaned out the account except for a measly 10 dollars required to keep the account open. Panic filled her heart. How was she going to pay for school and how could her mother do this?

Scared and confused she retuned home and confronted her mother with the passbook. My Gram a good woman on many levels but a selfish small person on more, responded with indignation. “Why are you angry? You live in this house rent-free, eat my food and have for 18 years. It is only fair you contribute. I needed the money and my name was on the account.” My Mother was shocked and dumbstruck by the cold calculation dash to her dreams of a better future. Then the final blow which still stings her today, my Gram delivered the final stake in her heart, “You are probably going to just get married and have kids and stay home anyway, what do you need a college education for? What!?! You think you are better than me?”

My Mother was wounded beyond belief. Not only did her mother not believe in her enough to ask her for the money, which she would have given open heart if it was needed, but her Mother was in competition with her and thought by educating her daughter beyond her, she would somehow disintegrate her own self worth. It was a devastating blow to my mother who continued to attend classes until the administration had to pull her out of one of her classes and ask her to leave since she could no longer afford the tuition. I asked my Mother why she did not explain it to the monks and ask for assistance, she told me she was too embarrassed by her poverty and betrayal of her mother.

My Mother did after some hard work and odd jobs and transfer to 2 more colleges manage to get her bachelors degree and become a teacher. Yes, she did get married and stay home to have 6 kids and raise us all to become productive members of society but most importantly she taught all of us that an education is a valuable asset to have and no matter what the road blocks. She instilled the desire to fight for your dream. They may betray you, leave you, take your job/money and your house but no one can ever remove a good education from your heart and soul.

This story haunts me as a parent and I use this lesson and story sometimes to my own detriment. I may sacrifice a bit of my own self for the hopes and dreams of my children but in a completely stage mom way I love watching both of them soar higher and shine brighter than I ever could.

The Value and Meaning of Education:

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
 Wiliam Butler Yeats

As a teacher I spend quite a bit of my day working with young minds trying to inspire children to discover material and open up to new concepts.  I guess I am trying to understand where the joy of discovery has been beaten out of the students. Now this next statement is going to make me sound very ancient, but I remember a time when back in my day, when the process of working through a problem and getting the right answer was somewhat exhilarating. There was pride in doing it by myself and not having someone spoon-feed me the answer like I was an infant. It was a sign of maturity and self-sufficiency to be able to problem solve and do it myself. Many times when I am struggling with a student who wants material spoon-fed, I tell them they are regressing backward.  It seems like sometime my toddler nieces and nephews have more drive than many of the general students I have in class.

It disheartens me to see young minds full of promise want only immediate feed back. Their favorite line when I ask them to look it up is, "but you know the answer". I normally reply that if I tell you, you will only write it down and promptly forget it but if you work for it you will remember it and if you teach it to someone else you will know it forever. (They hate this and now by the end of the semester often quote this to other students who ask.)  They find no joy in the this electronic age of immediacy to go about researching something and discover it on their own or work through a problem set. I miss seeing the glint in their eyes when they see something unique and novel in the laboratory. I also want to say I hate the sentence, “I AM BORED.” coming from my own children. I always repeat what my Grandmother would say to us, “Nothing is boring but boring people with no imagination.” Then she would promptly put us to work.

I have to say part of the problem we educators create is the belief in the almighty work sheet and vocabulary lists. The lack of vigor in elementary and junior high school science is appalling.  I have AP Biology students who have never ever done a single laboratory. It horrifies me that my students have been denied the joy of watching seeds sprout, terrariums flourish, cells breathe and chemicals react until I get them at 14 or 15 years of age. My Mom was amazing! We were constantly sent outside to discover, catch turtles, frogs and fireflies. Even in the city streets of Chicago we were allowed to have a small garden and watched the fruits of our labor make it to our table. We wandered the neighborhood cemeteries of Chicago on adventures read grave stones and came back with dozens of questions for my Grandmother and Mother. May times she would talk about the great famine in Ireland and the flu epidemic. The discovery of antibiotics and how when my Mom was a little girl almost died because all they had were sulfa drugs and she has rheumatic fever as a child. It was an amazing adventure in story time not just family history but in science and culture and society. Everything and everyone had a story and it involved all subjects we were taught in school. It was magical to my young mind. 

I really believe it is not just the electronic age that is the blame but it is the lack of challenge and discovery we offer to and demand of our children. We have over scheduled and over organized our child’s lives and limited their playtime and discovery opportunities. I know I am guilty of this. We need to make an effort to at times to, un-schedule, turn off and go out. Don’t be that parent I see all too often with their children in a restaurant, at the movies, in a park and on their phone. Turn it off!!! Engage children and yourself and it will have a more profound effect on your child’s imagination and your fulfillment of time with your children.  Make not just learning but the discovery of knowledge an important part of your parenting, intelligence and the drive to discover is the real gift you give to a child. This world with all it’s troubles needs creative thinkers who can problem solve. We need individuals who not only are knowledgeable but are able to search and discover new ideas. It is not only amazing to see your child succeed but it is more amazing and powerful to see them struggle, discover and succeed beyond not only your wildest dreams but theirs.

"It is in fact a part of the function of education to help us escape, not from our own time -- for we are bound by that -- but from the intellectual and emotional limitations of our time.
" T.S. Eliot