Nathalie+H’s+2015+OpEd+Article

=Parent's Low Expectations On Their Children Shaping Society?=

America today. America today is going through an educational change as we progress to Common Core and more problem based learning; however as the bar for success is put up by our nation’s leaders, have the parents of the next generation set their expectations to low?

One can see this type of act happening throughout elementary schools where children are the most vulnerable in every aspect. During those six years of elementary school their personality, social skills, work ethic and their standard of success have been shaped. Yet these characteristics and skills aren’t made purely by themselves, but through the influence of their surroundings, specifically their parents. This lowering of expectations has allowed children to become less able, academically and socially prepared than their parents. As stated in a research paper by Michelle H. Stern on //Parents’ Academic Expectations, Childrens’ Perceptions, and the Reading Achievement of Children at Varying Risk//,“ Adolescents’ perceptions were believed to have the greater influence on their own expectations, as their perceptions are hypothesized to reflect not only their parents’ expectations, but also the expectations they hold for themselves.” Thus, if the parent sends the sense that they are asking for the least amount of effort from their child the child will possibly fulfill that expectation, but will never strive to do better than that, stunting their learning potential at an early age.

So how much is the minimum amount of effort from someone? The only way to know is by testing it out, and that means by seeing how much they (the child) is able to do at a quality of work that is good but can slowly improve throughout the years. Unfortunately I have seen in person the exact problem I am trying to address, to where the parent sets the bar to low, believing that their child will fail if they were to push them. I was helping out my mother who is an artist in the classroom at Mound Elementary school; she is a person who always has high expectations for everyone, so for every art project she teaches she makes the lessons complex instead of a directive teaching style. She teaches them about artist and techniques that those artists used and then have the children recreate them in all slightly different manners. Yet each year there is one lesson that gets the most attention from the parents, the lesson where each child must recreate one of Mary Cassatt’s paintings. They have to copy the picture and use acrylics to paint it the same way, and each year the parent helpers say to her, “Are you sure they will be able to do that? It looks way too hard for them to do; you should have them do something simple instead. ” And that is what a parent with low expectations thinks, that they would be thrilled if their child could draw like a kindergartener than that of a third grade level. And yet every year they are shocked by the results of each child’s rendition of Mary Cassatt’s painting. As they are all done with care and focus, each their own, but all of them put in all of their effort to create it. It is even stated in Michelle’s H. Stern’s research that in a study between Anglo-Celtic Australians and Asian-Australians, Asian-Australian parents who wanted their child to score high on a test and would be happy if they did, found that their children scored higher than that of the Anglo-Celtic Australian children whose parents wanted their child to get a high score yet also stated that they would be happy with any score as long as the child felt they did their best.

That double expectation that parents have is what influences the child’s rate of success. There are parents with idealistic expectations, where they wish that their child will jet the perfect job without considering the child’s ability and then there are parents that have realistic expectations where they know that their child can get that perfect job with their capabilities. In order for your child to succeed there has to be a balance between the parent’s idealistic and realistic expectations and how they are “influential in predicting adolescents’ own college expectations, and their educational attainment measured fifteen years later.” (Michelle H. Stern’s research paper).

Parent’s expectations now have to rise if they want the new generation to become the generation that fixes world problems and make it a better place, and if not, this low standard will become the very basis of society and how to live.