parents should play a role but they are not teachers. to have to teach your children after school is silly...why else pay teachers?

the guv does set 'minimal' standards. parents get to choose, and are ultimately responsible for a child's performance in certain areas, but the academic failure of a student is not a parents fault if the failure stems from education/learning.

teachers and schools are being asked to take on more responsibilities because society is changing. the situation and the solutions needed are way too important to play partisan game of one-upmanship

__________________

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know them by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against them.
-Jonathan Swift

---"Thoughts On Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting."

how we use the schools is a point to ponder, but we lay responsibility on teh schools for education.

the schools are the toaster to the student as bread

__________________

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know them by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against them.
-Jonathan Swift

---"Thoughts On Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting."

We lay the responsibility on the schools to provide an educational venue where the reasourses are available. Schools teach. We dont give the schools the responsibility to make sure that the students actually learn. This is why throwing money at an educational problem never works. Utamatley it is up to the student to learn and the parent to ensure that he is learning!

true
you make a valid point...


then you go off the reservation...
...straw man? who was talking about throwing money at anything? that could be a later issue to take up, but why do you state a valid point and follow it up with another of your partisan idiocies?

in a perfect world yes. what does a society do with parents who do not help? and I disagree it is all up to the student to learn. kids need help learning. that is a given, unless you want to debate whether kids need help learning.

__________________

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know them by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against them.
-Jonathan Swift

---"Thoughts On Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting."

What I find strange is that people use the argument "throwing money at something isn't helping" as an argument for not increasing funds or for cutting funds.
Chances are even a good solution will require sustained or more funding... it just would not be "throwing money away".

For instance smaller classrooms with more individual attention are shown to be extremely beneficial. They would most certainly require more funding in many places.
Just because throwing more money at the same-old approaches is bad doesn't mean we don't need even more money to get beyond the same-old approach.

__________________
"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

Society has the CHOICE to help. However education is not societys RESPONSIBILITY!

And yet children from poorer nations come to our schools and thrash our students in GPA. I wander why? THERE PARENTS!!!

It's definitely a combination of A) parents, B) teachers, and C) the children themselves.
A) If the parents reinforce the importance of education it will help.
B) Let's face it, some teachers are better than others.
C) If the aforementioned parents have raised their children right, they will have a drive to succeed and put in the work necessary to do well in school and do what must be done and that is LEARN!