Educational Foundations

2(EFMP3732)
14 /09/2015
 The school as a community: parents and
teachers and their responsibilities and
roles.
• Parents are very important stakeholders (partners) in
the community.
• They have specific interest and duties in a school
within their community such as:
 Parents duties(1)
• Ensure that their children reap the maximum benefit from
education by offering security, support, caring for the
physical needs, supervising and exercising control over
educational activities at home; e.g. children doing
homework.
• Seeing that their children attend school regularly and make
effort to enroll them in the school and transport them to
school.
• Ensure that they contribute positively to education; e.g.
motivating their children and paying school fees on time if
required.
• Not to frustrate the teachers’ education efforts or interrupt
the teacher unnecessarily when he/she is teaching.
• Exercise control over the life-views put forward in the
school through critical evaluation of educational content,
methodology and activities.
 Parents duties(2)
• Accept part of the management of the school; e.g.
formulating local policies, vision, mission, school
atmosphere and the appointment of teachers.
• Provide specialized services to school in the form of
coaching sport, medical services, building school buildings
and constructing sport equipment
• Acknowledge and further the teacher’s professional status.
• Support and amplify the education provided by the school
by providing additional teaching and learning experiences.
• Collaborate with teachers with regard to all activities,
especially with regard to authority, discipline and respect.
 Parents duties(3)
• Support the teacher’s request for the better
conditions of service and to further the
teacher’s interests. Teachers expect the
following behaviour from parents:
– Support – moral, intellectual and financial.
– Guidance- Indicate what they want as parents
expect from teachers.
– Respect-personal, professional and academic.
– Involvement- work together as adults, educators
and friends.
 Teachers are sometimes not an original and
integrated part of the community in which they
work, but take on some responsibilities
towards the particular community in which the
school is situated at which they teach.
Therefore, teachers need to:
• Act in loco parentis during school hours and see to the children’s safety
and welfare
• Keep the parents fully informed about the children’s progress and
correct improper education through remedial teaching and learning.
• Seek the wholehearted cooperation of the parents of the children under
his/her care. Stumbling blocks must be identified and removed,
sympathy for the expectations of the parents for their children must be
shown, consultation, goodwill, mutual trust, loyalty and understanding
of parents’ problem.
• Official and non-official measures must be put in place for discussions
and meetings, e.g. parents’ evenings, teacher-parent associations,
school board meetings, and informal get-togethers.
 Parents also have specific expectations
from teachers:
• Loyalty to and respect for them as parents.
• Courtesy, friendliness and good manners.
• Respect for their children.
• Respect for school and private property.
• Cleanliness and neatness- a teacher should be a good role model to
learners.
• Appropriate social behaviour- sound moral behaviour and
temperance.
• Teaching of the hidden curriculum, dealing with non-syllabus
matters that are important to healthy and positive community life.
• Good planning, administration and class preparation and
subsequently appropriate learner-centred education.
 The vulnerable character of the present-
day family
• Vulnerability refers to being in danger of threats like
physical, sexual and emotional abuse, poverty,
malnutrition and no chance of getting access to
education, preventative health or medical care.
• This usually refers to children under the age of 18
whose mother, father or both parents or primary
care giver has died, and/or is in need of care and
protection.
• Unfortunately in our modern times factors such as
economic activities remove and isolate the nuclear
family from the extended family.
• It starts to function as a separate unit, thereby
becoming very vulnerable.
 The present day family(1)
• Economically vulnerable: In times of need (unemployment,
retrenchment, illness, death of the father), the family is dependent
upon itself.
• Socially vulnerable: The smaller, isolated family loses stability as
family members are heavily dependent on each other, and when
they experience problems they do not have relatives to turn to.

• Emotionally vulnerable: Family members are more emotionally

involved with each other because of their isolation.
• There is enormous pressure on the family members, who then
experience problems even more intensely.
• The family stability is threatened.
• Working parents are not at home, cannot receive their children
back from school, oversee homework and cannot provide security,
which result in emotionally insecure children.
 The present day family(2)
• Educationally vulnerable: Parents have to work
very hard and are away from home for long
hours.
• Parents, as the primary educators, do not fulfill
their responsibilities and therefore children turn
to friends and television for relaxation.
• In the process they are neglected and subjected
to bad influences.
• The so-called ‘key-chain children’ who leave for
school in the morning and return to an empty,
cold house after school, are most vulnerable.
 Vulnerable in respect of role
differentiation
• If the father is absent too often due to career obligations,
the son’s socialisation may be hampered because he does
not have enough contact with the father as identity figure.
Consequently, too close relationship with the mother may
lead to homosexual tendencies in the son.
• The wife also experiences role uncertainty due to her
emancipation, entry into the labour market and having
fewer children.
• The variety of roles from which a mother may choose
(housewife, career woman and/ or socialite), as well as her
actual position in one of these roles may lead to tension
and conflict.
• A double responsibility may make the woman tired and
irritable, causing educational neglect.
 The vulnerable family: Effects on
education
• The vulnerable family has a definite effect on
education. Because of the absence of the parents as
primary educators, the role of teachers in school
changes dramatically.
• It is not expected from the teacher to be teaching
subject matter only, but to stand in for the absent
parent as well.
• The result is that the teacher ends up teaching content,
but also values, norms, etc. and providing the security
and social control that are lacking at home. The
teacher therefore has to act ‘in loco parentis’,
substituting the parent.
 The following specific effects on
education are visible(1):
• Finance: Because of financial hardships, parents cannot pay
school fees and contribute to the provision of quality education
at school.
• As our government cannot pay for all the equipment and
facilities at schools, schools may lack equipment to provide
quality education.
• Discipline: Many parents do not discipline children at home,
resulting in major disciplinary problems at schools.
• We know that effective learning cannot take place without
discipline.
• Emotional support: Teachers have to act as counselors,
psychologists and career guides, to mention but a few roles.
• They have to support children emotionally during puberty and
adolescence, putting more pressure on the teachers.
 The following specific effects on
education are visible(2):
• Role differentiation: Male teachers have to act as role-
figures for boys and female teachers have to set an
example for girls.
• As many parents do not fulfill these roles anymore, the
child has to associate himself/ herself with the respective
teachers in order to be exposed to the male and female
roles in society.
• Training of teachers: Teachers need to be trained in taking
up more responsibilities than traditionally expected of
them.
• In future, there will have to be more emphasis on the
selection of teachers, as we need people who are
dedicated and have special talents to become teachers.