The role of parents in education

And how parents might instil greater curiosity in their children

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak on a podcast (not yet published) on all things curiosity-related, and our discussion moved into the world of education, a topic I’m also quite passionate about.

The question posed to me was: “What do I think is the role of parents in the child’s education? What can parents do to help instil greater curiosity in their children?”

I’ve already explored some facets of what might stop students from being curious but in this article, I thought it worthwhile to look at education more specifically.

Under the Microscope

First, let’s look at the dictionary definition of ‘to educate’. Mirriam-Webster offers:

To train by formal instruction and supervised practice especially in a skill, trade, or profession.

From this, we can extrapolate a couple of things:

• There are defined bodies of knowledge / skills that society has built over the years (e.g. maths, biology, carpentry, cooking)

• To impart that knowledge to newer generations in an efficient way, it should be provided through a formal set of instructions and supervised practice

Putting it more simply, we don’t need every child to reinvent mathematics or figure out for themselves that eating raw chicken is bad!

Let’s zoom in further. For knowledge to be imparted, we need at least two people: The teacher and the student. We know who the students are… but who’s the teacher? Ideally, it’s someone who possesses a greater understanding of particular topics and is good at imparting that knowledge.

Can the teacher be a parent? Of course. Let’s imagine if all education was undertaken via homeschooling. There are a few challenges:

1. Being an effective teacher is not a small undertaking. It requires time and effort, which is challenging if parents are juggling jobs and putting food on the table.

2. The process of teaching (aka ‘pedagogy’) requires an understanding of what is developmentally appropriate for kids. For example, you wouldn’t teach a 6-year-old algebra; you’d probably start with basic arithmetic and then layer on more advanced techniques as their confidence grows.

3. Homeschooling is a one-to-one / one-to-few dynamic. For a population of 1,000 kids, we’d need about 500 parents-as-teachers, so there’s an issue of scale.

So how might we consolidate the process of education into a smaller population? People whose job it is to be well-read or well-skilled across different bodies of knowledge, and are trained to be good at teaching in a one-to-many setting?

Hey look, we just invented the school, a dedicated place where education occurs.

Through the Telescope

Schools have existed as early as 2061 BC, evolving over time and often rooted in religion and / or economic class. Fast forward to today, and we have a wide range of places where education is centralised, from public to private schools, from trade skills to religious education.

As a heuristic, I think it’s safe to say that we still think of schools as ‘the place’ where kids go for education, irrespective of your views on what is being taught. But there’s a big problem: Scores are going down.

Source: OECD (2023), PISA 2022 Results (Volume I): The State of Learning and Equity in Education

This isn’t just a Covid thing; those scores started dropping well before the pandemic. I know it might be vogue to hate on the state of education or point the finger at demanding parents but I want to offer a different take:

Kids are being exposed to vastly more information than they are equipped to handle, all enabled by technology.

Discernment, critical thinking, discipline and self-awareness, these are vital skills that help adults navigate the world. Critically, they take time to develop. This is why curriculums exist, so that a variety of skills are built over time. But since the advent of the smartphone around the early 2010s (you may all look up at the graphs above and extrapolate for yourself), kids now have access to whatever information they want - including the explicit sort - without sufficient intellectual or emotional guardrails in place.

I mean, look at how poorly most adults deal with this overwhelming deluge of information; how can we expect the same for kids? Technology hasn’t enhanced education learning; it’s completely disrupted it. It’s like we’ve handed kids a firehose of information without teaching them how to drink.

Spinning the Kaleidoscope

I wonder if we need to completely re-think the process and scope of education.

Schools are a millennia old institution created under a different paradigm for a particular purpose. Don’t get me wrong, schools and curriculums do need to evolve, however it is still a place where the process of education is concentrated. Schools alone no longer have the capacity to help kids manage the torrential firehose of information.

But education doesn’t have to end with the school bell. And perhaps this is where the role of parents come back into it, to show kids how to better engage with information and education. To take an interest in what they’re learning, their interests, hobbies, and challenges. Instead of: “How was your day?”, to ask: “What did you learn today?” and go on the journey with them.

To instil greater curiosity, perhaps the single most powerful thing a parent can do is simply walk alongside them and demonstrate what it means to be curious.

We can’t prevent kids from consuming information (and ‘education’) but maybe we can teach them how to better engage with it.

If you liked this post, I’d appreciate it if you could drop a like and a share. Actually, even better, if you think this line of thinking might be of interest to your friends who are teachers, educators, and parents, please tag them in. I’d love to hear about their experiences!