What’s a parent’s role in their child’s senior school education?

Now, this is a huge question. We can all agree that parents have a role in their teenager’s development as young adults. However, their place in the equation seems to be significantly diminished and vague when their child enters secondary school compared to the early years or primary/elementary school. Partly, this is due to the shift through adolescence, the associated development of independence, and the rise of the influential impact of peers (Bahr, 2024). However, I reject the idea that parents should start to hide in the background as their children mature through puberty. I strenuously object to the idea that parents should be absent or relaxed about any aspect of their child’s life when they are secondary school students. But what exactly do we expect and need for them to be watching over?

The first step is to identify the boundaries or fields of responsibility. I feel parents should provide the principal role-modelling for moral, ethical, and thoughtful citizenship. Personal hygiene, honesty, and expectations for service all fall to the parents. If a child is reliable, honest, caring, charitable and generous… then this is due to the parent’s influence. Those who fall by the wayside often have parents who, in one way or another, have not been present as their child has matured.

Being a good and kind person seems to evolve from vicarious experience. Young people need the opportunity to understand the characteristics of a good adult from their observations and engaging experiences with generous and kind people. But classrooms are busy places. The teacher has a suite of pressures upon them, and they are required to be absolutely focused on the business of learning for the senior syllabus. Only in the extracurricular space, music, sports, debating, theatre, chess clubs and so forth, do students have an opportunity to know their teachers as exemplars and balanced adults. I propose that youth do not enjoy the relationships with their teachers they truly need to support their positive development. An amusing anecdote might illustrate my point.

I was a music teacher at a metropolitan state high school and dropped into the local supermarket on the way home. By the time I had reached the checkout, a crowd of my students had gathered “What are you doing here, Miss?” as though they were astonished to find me in the real world. I existed, for them, only in the classroom. On another occasion the same year, but this time, I was home. I had wandered out to the front garden to put some rubbish in the wheelie bin before the garbage collection team arrived. Deep in my thoughts, I was startled to see a collection of year eleven girls giggling on the sidewalk.  “Good morning, Miss!” The classmates had taken a tour of the neighbourhood after a sleepover with the intent of somehow catching me in my natural habitat. It was funny, but it illustrates my point. These students were doing well in my music class, but there was no chance my engagement with them would be deep enough to impact their moral and ethical development, even vicariously. I suggest this is the parent’s role.