Savaging Parents?

All parents have an obligation to help their children do well in public schools. When they do, kids gain potential to lead productive lives while giving taxpayers a return on their educational investment.

So it's easy to understand why S.C. Rep. Doug Smith, R-Spartanburg, has proposed a bill that would criminalize parents who don't participate in their children's educations. He sees it as a way to maximize the tax money South Carolinians spend on public schools. Just the same, this form of "stimulating" parents to be responsible is doubly wrong-headed.

For openers, it's hard to imagine the threat of fines and jail terms via magistrate's court, as the bill provides, would have much effect on parents who don't go to school conferences or show concern about their kids' behavioral problems in school. Something already is wrong in the lives of such parents, who, as Smith acknowledges, are few in number. Perhaps they have literacy problems or are so overwhelmed trying to make a living that they can't meet schools' expectations of parents. Perhaps they've already had brushes with the law.

More important, thanks to state and federal legislative mandates, the public schools are already in other businesses besides education. They're in the school breakfast and lunch business, the social worker business, the psychology business and the drug interdiction business, to cite just a few examples. Is it really a good idea to make schools the nanny who busts parents who fall short of middle-class expectations?

If legislators really want to help S.C. schools deal with the consequences of substandard parenting, they should invest more money in pre-kindergarten education and remedial programs for children who fall behind in critical subjects. To further savage parents who can't or won't play an educational role in their children's lives is useless.