Has the breakdown of the traditional "American family" led to the demise of our public schools?

Can you give a little more about how you think they are correlated?

Has the breakdown of public schools led to the increase of home schooling? Yes.

As for your question, I can’t say for certain, but my assessment of the public schools would be it’s been broken by standardized testing.

No Child Left Behind Act has played a big part I would say along with the fact that parents are overworked and expect the school system to be the complete one-stop shop for their kids’ education…

I have seen no actual proof (professional studies, for instance) that indicate that your hypothesis is true.

You would need to define the traditional American family for us to continue speculation.

@dynamicduo: I guess I’m referring to the days when mom, dad, and kid sat around the dinner table and the question “How was school today?” would come up. Also, most folks of the older generation will tell you that if they got in trouble in school, they could expect to be punished at home as well.

My how times have changed…

@chucklmiller This still does occur in many homes. How the media and TV portray “the average” family has changed.

Do you have any articles you’d like to link in here?

Or is this all based on “feeling” and “opinion” vs. facts?

From your comment, I have distilled two statements which I believe (crudely) summarize your theory:
1. Family interactions increase the quality of education.
2. Physical punishment increases the quality of education.

Regarding #1, I would say that yes, a family that is closer together would be prone to having a good education. But this in my mind is correlation, not causation. It could very well be that families that are not close, or dysfunctional families with abuse, inspire the child to gain a good education to get themselves out of their situation. I would need to see actual proof, studies, evaluations, anything to conclude that a close-knit family increases the quality of education.

Regarding #2, I simply do not support physical punishment for anything beyond actual criminals. I disagree with the theory that physical punishment increases the quality of the child’s education. As a data point, I was an A+ student in a household where physical punishment was extremely discouraged.

@SpatzieLover: This opinion (simply that, no research to back any of this up) is simply based on my observations as a former elementary school teacher vs. my observations as a former elementary school student.

@dynamicduo: Your summary of my opinion is partly correct. I do believe that a strong family base can promote better education.

However, regarding your ”#2”, I was just using the punishment topic to show how parents used to support the decisions of the school(imho) more than what I’ve seen today.

ALL studies I’ve ever worked with show that on average children from unmarried mothers test lower in school, have higher incarceration rates, higher drug use, increased chances of committing violent crimes, having children out of wedlock…. Bring those into the public school and yes you will begin to see how the fabric of a once solid institution has been frayed. There are other factors such a lower standards ,less accountability and less authority given to teachers which handicap schools all the more. Giving kids too much power and little structure is a recipe for failure.

Can you expand a bit on what you consider a “traditional family” to be?
Not to mention, “repairing” the “traditional family” isn’t really doable. How do you “make” a traditional family out of a single parent household?
I think the parenting matters more than the idea of “tradition”.

“Demise” means “death.” Do you mean “decline”?

i’m not sure what sense of ‘traditional american family’ you’re referring to. if you’re referring to the fact that there are more families with single parents, more families with two parents of the same sex, more multiracial families – then, no, i definitely don’t see that as being correlated with the downfall of the public school system.
american public schools are on the back burner in terms of receiving money, and – at least in florida – the schools doing well receive more money, and the schools obviously struggling, don’t.

maybe apathy is leading to the decline of quality in public schools, but i would not put the blame on ‘non traditional’ american families. i just don’t see any hint of correlation.

@Jeruba: I dunno…declining in some places, dying in others.

What is your definition of the “american family”? We have so many different kinds of blended families nowadays, which I think is a great thing. I don’t think it has any effect on education.
I totally agree with @SpatzieLover on this “Has the breakdown of public schools led to the increase of home schooling? Yes”
I know plenty of homeschooling parents, and although homeschooling seems to have a bad rap, it’s actually a better alternative to some public schools.

I agree. I think the problem is that as the definition of “family” has changed over the years, the public schools have remained (for the most part) unchanged. Schools have not kept up with the changing face of society like, say, businesses and organizations have. You can look at this 2-sided coin both ways I suppose…

Unless the schools are already dead, which they are not, because we still have a school system, it does not make sense to speak of the demise of schools as a thing that has already taken place. Your question puts it in the past tense.

Defining of terms has to be step 1 in a discussion like this. Sometimes when all the terms are defined, the debate is over.

@Jeruba: so is this debate over?

@chucklmiller Public schools haven’t kept up with SO many things, it’s hard to pinpoint the breakdown.

Societal changes are one thing. We had textbooks that were 15 yrs old, and other that were brand new had out dated “facts”...how can one “learn” when the tools are antiquated?

@chucklmiller The debate is never “over” simply because someone says so, or doesn’t.

What I believe Jeruba is saying is that your thesis is faulty to begin with, because the demise of public schools has simply not happened yet.

In fact, the day the American Family broke down (somewhere on route 34, at about four in the afternoon), public school 34 also keeled over, quite dead. Some say it’s coincidence, but I say there is a nefarious plot in play.

Not far away, it was the Religious Right vs the Godless Communists. RR had just scored with the Defense of Marriage Act. Godless Communists were in disarray. In fact, they forgot to put their goalie on the ice. So RR scored again, with the No Child Left Untested Act. Godless Communists were screaming at the referee for his biased refereeing.

Coincidence? I think not. For, at the same time, in area 51 (or is it 52, I can never remember) the airforce was hard at work trying to dismember what they believed to be a spacecraft (it was actually an alien, but they didn’t understand that).

So, where was I? Oh yeah, so the TAF were wandering into the area, unsupervised, even though the DAM was secure and strong (so they thought), and somehow they got sidetracked into the alien spacecraft (which was actually an alien) and the alien took off, carrying the DAM… uh the TAF with it.

Public Schools, as is perfectly understandable, fell ill, and wasted away. They will be buried, together with the Godless Communists, in adjoining plots in Arlington Cemetary. No flowers. Donations to the national defense fun will be gratefully accepted.

What you are proposing as cause and effect is a gross oversimplification. It is not clear to me at all that the higher divorce rate is even a cause.

I think I would say that lack of parental involvement is a partial cause. Most families with two parents require that both work. Single parents also must work.

I think increased parental pressure on children to excel has had an impact. parents sometimes today cannot accept poor grades. Some schools and teachers have caved under this pressure.

I agree with dynamicduo about standarized testing. Having it become the focus of education has had a huge negative impact on learning.

Burdening teachers with insane amounts of paperwork and administrative duties has also played a role.

Underfunding of education is a huge factor.

In my community what lead to the demise of the public school system is lack of space, rundown buildings, inadequate pay raises for administrators and overworked teachers.

@chucklmiller, I see calls above for definition of other terms.

I think a well-thought-out thesis could be written to link the state of the family to the state of education in the U.S. and offered up for debate, but I don’t see it here.

@GAMBIT, so you are saying that you live in a community that has no public schools?

You might say that the breakdown of the traditional American family when America went from a rural to an urban demographic as well as rural Europeans immigrating to our cities was responsible for mandatory education even existing.

I think a lot of the problems we see in education (certainly not a breakdown) is the way we have changed in our attitude toward our children. While we talk the talk about doing anything for them, too often we don’t walk the walk of parenthood. We claim to want to give them everything, that everything is too often plastic instead of guidance, discipline and a sense of responsibility.

@Jeruba: LOL…of course there are schools here. I teach in one!! However, I still say public schools as they existed in the 40’s and 50’s are dead. I’m not saying that’s good or bad, just true…

@chucklmiller What do you think it is like to change schools to a contemporary model? The powers that be cannot be convinced that putting children in 6 by 6 rows, sitting silently as a teacher talks to them for 55 minutes is obsolete.

Can you show some evidence that public schools are demonstrably getting worse?

No “evidence”....this came from a feeling (worry?) that I have about our current school condition, nothing more.

We won’t solve anything here…..but what a healthy discussion this has been!!

Entertainment of various kinds, automotive technology, courtship, and cultural values as they existed in the 40’s and 50’s are dead too. Is that fact related to the decline of schools and the breakdown of the traditional “American family”? Just looking for a statement here that makes some logical connection in terms that can actually be discussed.

It was GAMBIT who said that the schools in his or her community had suffered demise, so my question was addressed to him or her.

Differing times require differing measures; I think one thing that holds true from the “old days” is the idea of having at least one parent at home after school; the cycle of teaching doesn’t end at 2:30pm; young kids especially need the transition from school learning to home learning to apply life learning in context; I think in the business of today’s homes, there may be many factors: “helicopter” parents, overly-involved children with regard to after-school activities, not enough “family time” each day, and the roles of media, pop-icons and sports figures being portrayed as role models, when it’s parents, teachers, and local leaders who should be the role models. In these cases, it’s not under-attentiveness that’s causing the rift, but rather, mis-guided parenting skills.

On the education front, apportionment funding and performance measurement solely on Math and English (generalizing here) and by property taxes is also proving to be a big problem for the modern-day educational infrastructures. When a child who can’t learn in the mode of memorizing and regurgitation is told for the better part of 12 years that he/she is failing, when in fact, the system is failing to meet their learning style and needs, we are probably talking about a major change sea-change that’s needed in education, as opposed to a single finger-pointing.

Lastly (sorry for the diatribe), we need to realize that that in order for America to remain competitive, the educational system must address all manners of learners, and address more than just a singular goal of preparing students for a 4-year liberal arts or science college education. Career and Technical Education fields are in many cases under-utilized, and not enough is being done to matriculate students from early on (tracking and aligning life-long and career goals).

@Jeruba – No I wasn’t saying that the public school system is non existent in my area. I was stating why it has fallen in the last twenty years.