Kristof on Poor Parenting

Nick Kristof concludes that urban education in America is in shambles: See "Cities in Crisis" which reports that our nation’s 50 largest cities graduate only 50% of their high school students. He attributes this to poor parenting.

This argument blames parents for their children's poor performance in school. But by doing this, we are shifting the responsibility of education away from the schools and onto upbringing. Not only does this ignore those students who are resilient despite the fact they grow up in broken homes, (or those that are 'failures' despire the fact that they grew up in in-tact households) but it is too simplistic of a hypothesis. In reality, many exogenous factors cause 'failure.' Borken homes + institutional bias + peer networks + poor educational standards etc. etc.

In season 4 of The Wire, a pilot project was set up for kids who 'didnt fit in in the regular classroon,' and it appeared to be working, but was shut down because of particular assumptions about education. There are many such programs that are not supported either due to bias or lack of funding. Instead, those people who are pursuing creative classroom ideas should be supported. If as Obama argues, his $18 billion pledge to support education “is not going to make a difference if parents don’t parent,” then we will continue to give up on these children. The answer lies in innovation, not blame.