Parents today are more involved in their children’s education than were parents in the past
Education is a pivotal aspect not only for the individual’s success but also for the advancement of humanity as a whole. The older generation has always played a significant role in assisting their younger counterparts to get the best out of their education, but this support and engagement have changed over the course of time. Although some people hold the opinion that the involvement of parents in their children’s education has fallen significantly due to the former’s overloaded schedule, I personally endorse the view that nowadays parents have a more decisive role in youngsters’ education for three obvious reasons.
First and foremost, currently the scope of education has enlarged and, hence, the parents play a vital role assisting their children in ensuring the best studies. Decades ago, education was limited to attending schools and studying the academic subjects offered, and this was the typical scenario for all of the school-aged children. However, in present times education entails more than the internalization of facts and figures which are taught at school. Today, a person who is labeled as educated knows a lot more than the information contained in books or communicated by the school teachers and university professors. Thus, parents make every possible effort to ensure that their children become well-rounded people by encouraging the latter to attend extracurricular classes and enrich their knowledge in a variety of areas.
A second reason which compels me to favor this approach is that education has become a luxury, and parents are the people who pay the tuition. Consequently, parents get more involved in choosing the university that their children should attend. A vivid example to shed light on my view of my cousin’s case; he is a highly intelligent person and had an outstanding academic performance at school. He was eager to study at one of the prestigious universities in the world and major in Computer Science. Nevertheless, after his family learned about the tuition fee, approximately 100.000 USD per year, both of his parents discouraged him from this thought as they could not afford such a financial burden. On the contrary, universities of the past were free of charge, and the parents did not have any influence on their children’s decision which university to attend.
The final argument to reinforce my position relates to the supervision of their offspring’s education by parents. In the past, children and young people did not have access to many entertainment facilities and were not subjected to distractions. As a result, their main ‘pastime’ was studying and reading books, for which they did not have any strict parental control. Nonetheless, in today’s era of technological developments, the youngsters are exposed to a diversity of distractions and, inevitably, can easily lose their concentration. For example, a recent study conducted by the Ministry of Education and Science of Armenia has revealed that those children who come from two-income families demonstrate poorer academic performance due to the fact that their parents are not directly involved in their education and do not control their academic commitment.
To recapitulate, it is my firm belief that currently parents have more involvement in their children's education since they help their children’s education outside of the school, are the main party responsible for paying the tuition as well as need to control how their children approach their studies.
Submitted by Christine on