Parental Involvement in Schools: Not for Me!

Let’s for the moment drop all the pretense and admit that what we talk about when we talk about more parental involvement in our schools is not really more parental involvement in our schools but better schools with absolutely no more involvement than necessary—crazy stay-at-home parents excepted.

All of which is to say that if the volume of paperwork that I receive at home each day from JP’s kindergarten classes continues at this pace, I am going to take him out of school and send him to work on a farm in Alabama. I’m sure I can find one that will employ domestically born 5-year-olds.

Sheesh.

Published by Theodore

Theodore Ross is an editor of Harper’s Magazine. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, Saveur, Tin House, the Mississippi Review, and (of course), the Vietnam News. He grew up in New York City by way of Gulfport, MS, and as a teen played the evil Nazi, Toht, in Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. He lives with his son, J.P. in Brooklyn, and is currently working on a book about Crypto-Jews.

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2 Comments

  1. Every time people talk about “cutting unnecessary administrative positions”, please feel free to kick them in the knees for me also.
    My wife is a stay-at-home parent who happens to have other interests besides paperwork and she’s not amused either.

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