Home is the first school and parents the first teachers of a child- it is a well- established truth. The role of parents is equally important when a child grows and attends school and thereafter. The most important agency that contributes the most towards the development of human personality is the Home. Home is the most primary and fundamental agency of education because the first steps of education begin here.
Parents have an important role to play in the educational achievements of their wards. All the hurdles, which stand, as hindrances in the way of educational improvements have to be removed and children must be put on the right track through insistence, persuasion, advice, and guidance and by providing an inspiring and conducive atmosphere for studies at home.
What must be done at Home Level?
Text Book Reading must be encouraged and made compulsory. Children must be encouraged to make better use of their textbooks for effective learning.
Now-a-days children do not seem to have the required patience to read their textbooks. Instead they prefer to mug up the prepared notes from guidebooks. This is a great drawback and an undesirable trend.
Textbook reading is very essential for the long term, permanent and all round improvement of the children. Children must be habituated to textbook reading. Textbook reading must become a part of their daily programme of learning.
Children must be encouraged to make better use of their textbooks for learning. Textbook reading helps them in many ways. It helps them to acquire fluency in reading, broadens their outlook and provides first hand information. It develops vocabulary, improves spellings and the ability to comprehend. It helps to improve perception, expression and develops linguistic ability.
Hence, parents must insist their children to read their textbooks every day since that alone can reduce many problems in education.
Discourage the use of guidebooks
Children are found using guidebooks to the complete neglect of their textbooks. This is an undesirable tendency. Use of guidebooks for learning, even from the primary classes, restricts certain necessary improvements in children.
Guidebooks discourage textbook reading. They provide children with brief prepared notes and make them lazy to read the textbooks.
When a child reads his textbook for learning, various intellectual activities take place in the process; for example he reads, understands, thinks, comprehends, critically examines, identifies questions and answers, prepares notes by himself. These intellectual activities bring phenomenal development in the child, which he can never gain by the mere exercise of mugging up the prepared notes.
Parents must discourage the use of guidebooks by students, at all levels.
Home environment must be conducive for effective self learning
Teaching is not mere spoon- feeding. It is the student who is to learn and that he has to do by himself. Whatever the child learns during a day from the teacher, he must read at home for effective learning.
Parents must ensure that their wards are getting peaceful, quiet, undisturbed atmosphere devoid of other distractions to enable them to make a comprehensive self-study at home.
General Readings must be given sufficient attention and importance.
Parents should see that their wards are reading enough general informative and other useful books and magazines of educative value to improve their general knowledge and general awareness.
This is very essential to widen the horizon of their knowledge and also to make them fit enough to compete in the various entrance and competitive examinations.
Encourage them to listen to the daily newscasts from the Radio and Television.
Regular listening to the newscasts helps language improvement. It helps to improve vocabulary and expression besides keeping the listener abreast of time.
Encourage them to read Newspapers daily.
Newspaper reading must be encouraged and made a part of their schedule of work. This practice helps the children to gain fluency in reading, develops vocabulary, improves expression, inculcates reading habits, and develops linguistic ability besides providing up-to-date information.
Hence, parents must make children read newspapers daily.
Parental attention and follow-up action from the lower classes onwards.
By the time the children reach higher classes, say class X, they ought to have attained certain level proficiencies and competencies. At least they must have gained fluency in reading, comprehensive ability, and verbal expression.
Parents must pay proper attention to the child’s learning from the grass root level or from the lower classes onwards. Giving attention to their studies only in the higher classes or at the time when they have to face the Board examination will not have the desired effect. It is like attending to the crop at the time of harvest or like pouring water over an inverted vessel.
Parent- teacher contact at regular intervals.
Parents must frequently meet teachers to know about the level of learning and performance of their children. This will help the parents to know the area of academic weakness and other problems of their wards and can take follow-up action accordingly. The child also may then become more responsible towards studies.
• Help them develop positive attitude to all the subjects.
Students, now -a –days, develop a negative attitude to certain subjects, thinking that these subjects are not required for higher classes or for further studies. This attitude is dangerous as it makes them neglect the study of these vast and important subjects.
Hence, parents must advise the children to give equal importance to all the subjects. They must see that all the subjects are included in the daily schedule of learning.
• Encourage judicious use of Television and other facilities connected to it.
Television is useful only if we use it with discretion. The uses and abuses of Television depend on how one uses it. Most of the modern children spend their precious time before television watching only sports and other entertainment programmes. Even if we force them to go to the next room to study, they are not mentally prepared for a comprehensive study.
They may physically be found learning, but no real learning takes place in that sound polluted distracting environment. Days, months, years go like this, what else can we expect other than deterioration in the field of educational achievements? Modern man cannot discard these facilities. But let us learn how to live with these facilities, without affecting the educational accomplishments of our children.
• Help them properly manage the limited time among studies , games and entertainments.
These are days of distractions; one can utilize his time in any manner he likes. There are enough activities to engage him. Children may not have that much practical wisdom to properly divide the limited time among studies, games and entertainments. Too much time for entertainments and games means too less time for studies and general readings which will surely, affect their educational achievements.
Hence parents must make the children aware of the value of time and help them make a judicious distribution of it.
• Private Tuition classes in addition to the regular normal classes at school too have adverse effect on the children.\This keeps the children bound up in tuition classes as well as at school from early morning to late evening without any respite for rest or quiet self- study at home. Overburdening and overtaxing the children make them overtired and unfit to pursue any meaningful self- study at home. This may also lead to some kind of mental stress, confusion and negative attitudes. \u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n• Encourage louder reading in children.\u003cbr\u003e\n Louder reading enables the children to quickly grasp the contents. Environmental distractions will not distract their attention and it helps to converge their entire attention on what they read. Even other members, who listen to their reading, can correct the errors which they make while reading.• Impress upon them the importance of Prayer. Prayer is very important in one’s life. All virtues start from prayer and it makes one disciplined. It keeps one away from evil thoughts and evil actions. Since this is the character formation period of one’s life, this is also the best time to induct such good habits.• Help them to develop better attitudes. Now a days most of the children are found more passive, lazy, indifferent, irresponsible, easy-going, etc. in their attitudes. Most of them are not prepared for serious studies or to exert hard work to improve their performance. Parents must diagnose this change and do the needful to mould their personality and to make them better and responsible citizens. Help them to inculcate such values as love, kindness, sympathy, compassion, courtesy, truthfulness, tolerance, humility, politeness, obedience, respect, etc. The individual student has to be alert, active, perseverant and vigilant to the goals that have been set for him to achieve in education. He cannot afford to be slack, aimless or indifferent and indecisive. He has got to be all vigilant, conscious and hard working. He has to strive, sweat, toil work hard, keep awake and above all undergo the requisite penance for making steady, sustained and worthwhile progress in the achievement of his ever expanding educational accomplishments to the maximum degree possible.”,
• Private Tuition classes in addition to the regular normal classes at school too have adverse effect on the children.
This keeps the children bound up in tuition classes as well as at school from early morning to late evening without any respite for rest or quiet self- study at home. Overburdening and overtaxing the children make them overtired and unfit to pursue any meaningful self-study at home. This may also lead to some kind of mental stress, confusion and negative attitudes.
• Encourage louder reading in children.
Louder reading enables children to quickly grasp the contents. Environmental distractions will not distract their attention and it helps to converge their entire attention on what they read. Even other members, who listen to their reading, can correct the errors, which they make while reading.
• Impress upon them the importance of Prayer.
Prayer is very important in one’s life. All virtues start from prayer and it makes one disciplined. It keeps one away from evil thoughts and evil actions. Since this is the character formation period of one’s life, this is also the best time to induct such good habits.
• Help them develop better attitudes.
Now a days most of the children are found more passive, lazy, indifferent, irresponsible, easy-going, etc. in their attitudes. Most of them are not prepared for serious studies or to exert hard work to improve their performance.
Parents must diagnose this change and do the needful to mould their personality and to make them better and responsible citizens.
Help them inculcate such values as love, kindness, sympathy, compassion, courtesy, truthfulness, tolerance, humility, politeness, obedience, respect, etc.
The individual student has to be alert, active, perseverant and vigilant to the goals that have been set for him to achieve in education. He cannot afford to be slack, aimless or indifferent and indecisive. He has got to be all vigilant, conscious and hard working. He has to strive, sweat, toil work hard, keep awake and above all undergo the requisite penance for making steady, sustained and worthwhile progress in the achievement of his ever-expanding educational accomplishments to the maximum degree possible.
It is the triangular effort of Students, Teachers and Parents that help in the educational achievements of students. Each and every parent can contribute immensely to the development of his progeny through his own exemplary life.
Smt. J. Santhakumary
P.G.T.(Economics),Shift I
LibZine 