Growing Up Without a Filter

A child educated only at school

is an uneducated child

            A friend of mine posted this statement on Facebook.  The efforts to improve public education have primarily focused on students meeting content standards.  However, absent in the focus is the role parents should play in supporting their children’s education.  It is the absence of parent involvement that undermines the education of children.

There is a disturbing trend that is not being addressed and it has a tremendous impact on public education.  The trend is children who are growing up without a filter.  There are children who are witnessing, hearing and learning things that are not appropriate for their age.  Since there is no one to model appropriate behavior, these children come to school and emulate the inappropriate behaviors they witness, hear and learn. 

When their learned inappropriate behavior conflicts with expected school behavior, these children struggle and they become labeled.  These students are called disruptive, violent, emotionally disturbed.  These are children that will likely be placed in special education programs because they are unable to transition their inappropriate behavior to the expected school behavior.

While these children have now been labeled and placed in a special education program, the parents of these children continue to allow their children to be exposed to inappropriate behaviors.  When a child’s first instinct to conflict resolution is to fight, that child has witnessed, heard and learned the way to respond to conflict is to fight.  When a child is frustrated and they do not have the coping skills to calm themselves because they have witnessed, heard and learned to curse, yell, scream and threaten, that is what he/she will do.  Lastly, when children use inappropriate language discuss inappropriate content in their daily interactions with peers in public settings, it is because they have witnessed, hear and learned this in non school settings.  The question becomes, how can schools neutralize the lack of a filter some children have?

There is no easy solution to this problem.  A teacher and administrator can only do so much work with children who are growing up with no filter.  The difficulty is convincing parents to partner with the school to develop a filter for their child.  Unfortunately, there are some parents who do not believe in having a filter because they grew up without a filter. 

If we want all children to learn, not become labeled and not improperly placed in special education programs, schools will have to find a way to neutralize the lack of a filter in order for children to learn. This is where partnership with parents is crucial to the success of the child.