Why let grades determine your child
The education circle is more triangular than circular in the sense that it has the child at the top, the parent to the left of the bottom, then the teacher to the right of the bottom of the triangle. Which invariably means that every party has a role to play in the academic performance of the child, says educational consultant and parenting coach, Diasy Umenyiora.
Often, when a child doesn’t perform well especially after an exam, we as parents would come at him or her with all sorts of advice and statements depicting how disappointed we are, forgetting that there was a role we may have not played that would have resulted in such a performance.
While analyzing the roles teachers and parents have to play, Umenyiora said, “from the angle of the teacher: Each slot on the daily timetable is allotted 35 minutes. In a classroom, there are all kinds of learners- from fast paced ones to those who need more time. Everyone is expected to be carried along within this time-frame. And it is impossible oftentimes. The teacher always needs to creatively restructure to be able to accommodate these more time learners. Where such learners aren’t taken into consideration, after a class, they don’t understand what was taught but are still given tasks as take-home.”
She noted that back at home the parent often gets back tired. Homework is presented. The parent isn’t in the mood to assist because of course he/she is tired from the hectic day’s work. So as that tired parent, we scribble the answers down without attempting to teach the child (who of course doesn’t know how to arrive at the answers) and simply ask them to recopy such “pencil scribbled” answers. The child of course is glad- work made easy. Scribbles as instructed and the next day, submits the Home Work done.
The teacher marks, endorses her signature, imprints the date and goes ahead to the next topic on the scheme of work and the cycle continues.
Umenyiora stressed that studies show our learning environment must consider the physical, cognitive and emotional elements in that environment to optimise outcomes. This means that where the physical and cognitive are considered and the emotional left to its fate, the child will not provide the outcomes we expect. All elements ought to be balanced. This is often what we do as parents – dump the emotional element of the child.
What then do we do? Research shows that for every achievement made, a hormone, dopamine is released. This hormone creates a sense of pleasure when an achievement is made, causing the achiever to be motivated to do more. A child who is termed a ‘dullard’ (there’s no dull child) will show low levels of dopamine resulting in little or no motivation to achieve more while a child who is encouraged to perform better or is praised for performing better, will show high levels of the dopamine level resulting in a higher motivation to out-perform her previous performance.
Source – Guardian
