Parents, students, teachers must unite

The challenge of successfully teaching children how to do well in school is an entity that will be with us always.

I have read the word “ownership” being used to describe the attitude necessary for a child to be successful. But the same word must be applied to the way the parents and the teacher in a given class contribute. There must be an active participation in all three areas, which can be a tiring thing, but only by an attitude of ownership coordination on the part of all three parties can the child achieve the success they need for a happy, fulfilled life.

This is a local family-school effort and to try to make it a county or state thing, much less a national thing, is a mistake.

Someone said that all politics is local and this can be emphatically be said about young people’s education.

George W. Bush tried to sell educational improvement on a national scale and it was a colossal failure. No Child Left Behind became a Madison Avenue nonsensical term, which never was given the organizational push it needed. With so little local idea support, it had no chance.

A school can be a magnet school or a private Catholic school but unless the child-parent-teacher involvement exists in a continuing, aggressive way, the child will not get the full benefit of his school experience.

Chuck Barr

St. Charles