Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Parents are the best teachers. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.
There are some people who believe that parents are the best teachers. Although some reasons they support their idea with are agreeable, there are still many constraints that hinders parents from being the best teachers. These constraints disables parents from facilitating their child's development and learning – what a teacher should do.
It is easy for parents to put too many or too high expectations on their child. These expectations may come from various factors. One of the factors can be parents' own denied dream, which can be projected to their child. It is likely that a parent who was not able to enter a college wants to accomplish his/her suppressed desire by making his/her child study hard enough to enter a good college. The expectations can also derive from parents' socioeconomic status. Those with high socioeconomic status are inclined to wish their child to fit in what they have achieved. They may not bear it if their child is left behind or make troubles in school.
It is hard for parents, on the other hand, to be objective on their child. Unlike professional teachers in school, parents do not have other children at the age of their child to compare their child with. Even without profound knowledge on child development and learning, it is possible to some extent to be aware of a child's strengths, weaknesses and problems of development and learning through comparison a child with other children at the similar age. The increasing number of families with an only child makes it more difficult to compare a child with others in order to better understand him/her. Parents' other obstacle to understanding their child is their myths about “my” child. They feel it uncomfortable to accept the errors of their strong beliefs or expectations of their child. In addition, they are not equipped with the ability to develop or utilize an assessment tool in order to gain objective information on their child.
One of other difficulties that parents face to be a good teacher is the fact that they are not able to expose their child to a variety of stimulus. Society has forced families to have two wage-earners; as a result, parents have less time to share with their child. Parents with a certain limited time cannot satisfy not only the amount of stimulus required for their child's effective learning but also their quality. Parents' lack of professional content knowledge on a subject is also a crucial issue determining the quality of stimulus that a child will experience.
Now it is clear that parents cannot be the best teachers. Their expectations on their child and inability to have objective concepts of their child and to offer high-quality and sufficient stimulus to their child can badly affect their child's development and learning on the contrary to what they wish about their child. The best way that I believe parents can do to encourage their child's development and learning is to exchange information about their child with professional teachers and promote their understanding of their child.
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