Parents’ Literacy and their children’s success in school essay

Undoubtedly there is a strong link between the parents’ literacy and their children’s success in school. Nowadays, a lot of leading educational researchers are concerned with the question of children’s success in school. “Why some children succeed in the teaching process, but others fail in it” is considered to be one of the most polemic and debate questions in today’s society.

Nowadays, parent education and support are seen as one of the major components of family literacy.

According to William Teale and Elizabeth Sulzby, “Home background plays a significant role in a young child’s orientation to literacy. But home background is a complex of economic, social, cultural, and even personal factors” (193).

Thus, the parents have a great impact on their children’s success, as well as education for a number of reasons, but one of the most important reasons is that they are the first teachers for their children.

In turn, Joseph Sclafani emphasized that “the influence of teachers is actually reciprocal and to some extent dependent on what your child brings to the classroom…These same teachers also form impressions based upon other information such as your child’s previous year’s grades and test scores, and his or her family background and the family’s level of involvement” (84). Another research shows that the mother’s education greatly influences the children’s learning process. Ann states that “the mother’s education if one of the most important factors influencing children’s reading levels and other school achievements…Generally, traditional research has revealed that more highly educated mothers have greater success in providing their children with the cognitive and language skills that contribute to early success in school” (1).

Admission to the school is a turning point in the life of a child. This critical moment begins a new stage in the development of a baby: he will try to master the different forms of activities that are not always similar to the previous ones, to develop a new style of relationships with the peers and adults, etc. Success in school depends largely on the quality of skills and knowledge generated in the preschool years, the level of the development of his cognitive interests and cognitive activity. Therefore, the parents should be literate and educated to help their children in succeeding in different school subjects.

The success of children’s teaching in school is not only connected with the presence of a certain amount of knowledge generated in the preschool years. The schooling presents the basic requirements to the mental activity. In connection with this, the level of development of intelligence is one of the important factors in children’s education in schools.

What is more, it is impossible to overstate the importance of children’s early literacy development. Their success in school and later in life largely depend on the abilities to write and read. This is a well-known fact that the early childhood years are very important in children’s literacy development. That is why the parents should make all the possible efforts to help their children in obtaining literacy skills and knowledge.  The education and literacy skills that the children obtain largely depend on the education and literacy skills that their parents obtained that they were kids.

Considering the family education and literacy as focused and manageable processes, we make sure that a purposeful organization of influence on a child, directed by a great pedagogical knowledge, is essential. As it was mentioned above, the guarantee of children’s success in school is the parental literacy.

Thus, it is very important to develop the parent literacy programs, which will be aimed at providing the fathers and mothers with a certain minimum of knowledge, helping them in self-organization and formation of educational skills and knowledge. The majorities of young parents feel insecure in the role of educators of their children and often see themselves as the poor teachers. The uncertainty of adults negatively affects the establishment of the child’s personality, causing in his behavior imbalance, anxiety, desire to control the behavior of parents, hinders normal relations in the family. Very often parents do not realize the full range of possible interventions for the child.

The reasons are different: some families do not understand why they need to educate their children; others do not know how to do it, etc. One of the main areas of pre-school education institutions is to educate the parents to be literate and educated. The pedagogical education of parents should be directed to their personal development, giving them the opportunity to succeed in raising a family, getting the joy of communicating with their children.

Increasing parents’ educational and literacy culture is implemented through various collective and individual forms of work. The collective forms of work include the lectures, discussions, debates, conferences, etc. The individual forms of increasing parents’ educational culture include the individual consultations and discussions. As it was stated above, the parents should promote their children’s literacy. Such parent literacy and education programs are aimed at helping the parents in training their children.

In the process of analyzing situations the teacher corrects the parents’ answers, indicates various problems, and offers solutions to these pedagogical situations encountered in the practice of family education. At the same time the teacher relies on the reasoning of parents which reveal a teaching literacy in the conversation, share their experience in the education of their children, talk about the impact of measures on a child in similar situations.

Taking this information into account, it can be said that the family literacy programs can be viewed as an instructive way to assist their children become successful and advanced in school while their parents improve the literacy skills and knowledge.  Parent education and literacy programs are developed in order to teach the parents how to develop and perfect their skills and knowledge in becoming the good teachers for their children, and to teach the parents how to become the full participants in education and training of their children. In connection with this fact, the parents and teachers should closely work together and develop the children’s literacy skills and knowledge. Moreover, it should be a close connection between the home literacy practice, as well as the school ones. The parents and correctness of their speech play an important role in developing their children’s literacy skills. The foundation of child’s literacy is laid with the development of his speech.

The family is the most important area of ​​determining the development of the child in the preschool years. The establishment of the nature of the child, the formation of his relationship to others, the first communication skills occurs in the family. The family provides the satisfaction of essential needs of a small child – the need for recognition, love and emotional security. The importance of family education is that it is carried out continuously since birth, and is based on a close emotional contact between the parents and their children. Too many parents are concerned about the education of their children, but are indifferent to their personal education. Increasing the level of parents’ education, educational growth of their culture, has a positive effect on the character of children’s education.

Taking the above-mentioned information into consideration, it is possible to conclude that literacy is not something that can be transferred by inheritance, with which you can either be born or not. Literacy as the ability to read and write is considered to be one of the most necessary skills and it is important to work very hard in order to acquire this skill. The educated and literate parents are better in supporting their children’s learning process in school.  The children of more educated parents are much better in learning the educational materials than the children of less literate parents.

In addition to this, it is necessary to add that the parents’ education has a significant impact on their children’s success in school. The parents can compensate for the lack of education, creating a “favorable learning environment” at home. It is very important to spend more time with their children – to play, read, learn songs and poems. The parents, who wish their child to reach certain heights, just have to realize that their relationship with the child is directly proportional to his intellectual development. Success in addressing this complex and important task, as well as the successful study of the child in primary school largely depends on a well-organized succession between parents and schools.