Heather MacTaggart discusses the role of the home, the school and the community in a system of education.
Engendering parent support for the core learning principles and parent involvement in the learning process is of the utmost importance.
Accordingly to a large study by the University of Michigan, family meals are the single strongest predictor of better achievement scores and fewer behaviour problems for children 3 to 12.
A compelling body of research now suggests that families and communities account for as much as half the variation in student achievement across schools. Journal of Marriage and the Family (May 2001)
Dr. Neufeld has dubbed this phenomenon peer orientation, which refers to the tendency of children and youth to look to their peers for direction: for a sense of right and wrong, for values, identity and codes of behaviour. But peer orientation undermines family cohesion, poisons the school atmosphere, and fosters an aggressively hostile and sexualized youth culture. It provides a powerful explanation for schoolyard bullying and youth violence; its effects are painfully evident in the context of teenage gangs and criminal activity, in tragedies such as in Littleton, Colorado; Tabor, Alberta and Victoria, B.C. It is an escalating trend that has never been adequately described or contested until Hold On to Your Kids. Once understood, it becomes self-evident — as do the solutions.
Read more By encouraging and facilitating collaborations among families, schools and communities, we will find and create the best educational responses to a rapidly changing world. Dona Mathews and Rosanne Menna, Solving Problems Together,
Education Canada, Winter 2003, Volume 43, No. 1 |
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