Quote Originally Posted by SadisticNature View Post
If you place more of the onus on the parents however, you create a lot more problems in society. People from poor families either with a single parent who works, or with two parents working full time are much less successful at managing this burden.

Furthermore, blaming the parents for the failures of the school system ensures it continues to fail. It's not like the parents of kids doing poorly in school are going to be more successful as time progresses. Most of the kids who don't do well in school come from families that didn't do well in school, and saying that they should have the supports at home propagates this.

Ultimately the reason we have an education system at all is that parents are not the best qualified people to teach their children a lot of subjects, and if we want the chance of children able to do more and better than their parents did we need a system that enables students to learn skills their parents don't have. Ultimately relying on parents to do more in education fails at this.
Though (mostly) true, it doesn't change the fact that we (in the US) throw more and more money at education getting less and less value. And for that I blame parents who, for all the reasons you mention, don't take an interest in their childrens' educations.

I'm not suggesting that they take over the task... but they could encourage their children to explore "educational" venues. Whether libraries or nature centers or just the History Channel once in a while.

How many children read graphic novels... and don't realize the The 300 is a true story (give or take some aggregious poetic license.) If they did, might they not learn more about what happened just before or just after... or Troy... or Robin Hood. It would be so simple... just to say "There's more to that story ya know." and send them off to the library (damn, I almost forgot...) or to the computer!! and find out. And then say "Tell me about it tonight at dinner."