Teacher Woes

I have read many commentaries like Terri Hamlin’s (Aug. 30) in the past, and I have thought, well, something is undoubtedly being done to improve teaching conditions for these wonderfully dedicated people. But Lorian Elbert’s commentary of the same day, a description of students’ abysmal class behavior, tells us that nothing has changed. I think Hamlin’s observation--the lack of parenting of our children and everything that that word implies--is the key to the problems that beset our schools.

If parents don’t know how to parent, they must be taught. What if we invited parents to parenting classes from the very first days of kindergarten? That is, required them to attend and employers gave, by law, half-days off once a week to working parents to attend these classes, where parents would be instructed on how best to prepare their children for school, how to encourage them, help them with their classroom behavior and lessons. These parents would be required to take turns, on a set schedule, monitoring their children’s classes, thus lending further support to the teachers.

Couldn’t these parenting classes begin by teaching parents how to teach their children basic courtesy, class behavior, the discipline required to complete homework?

If this parental involvement continued through the school years, the parents and children would grow together and benefit tremendously as a family, with families benefiting from their association with other families. Teachers like Hamlin would be free to teach, and others, like Elbert, might return to the classroom.

KATHERINE BEVASH, La Jolla