“Education” comes from a Latin verb, educare, which means to bring out or to lead forth.

The desired effect of education on children is both to bring them out of ignorance, and to lead out the talents that lie within them.

Until relatively recent times, formal education was the preserve of the wealthy, either wealthy individuals, or wealthy institutions such as the Church. Even today, in democratic societies with systems of secular public education, considerable differences of quality exist between the education available to different segments of society.

Public schools vary in the quality of staffing, teaching, and curriculum. Communities vary in cultural outlook. Professional educators vary in terms of preparation and intellect.

Parents whose desire for their children is for them to get “a good education,” must be prepared to do more than merely send them to the local school. They must give some thought to what they mean by ‘a good education.”

Parents must put into words the skills and information that they expect their children to acquire by the end of four or eight or twelve years of formal education.

They must make themselves known to their children’s teachers, showing up at parent-teacher conferences and communicating about concerns about their children’s work between conferences.

They need to provide their children with the space, time, and supplies they need in order to complete their homework efficiently. They need to ensure that the child has a comfortable, well-lighted spot for pleasurable reading.

They need to monitor their children’s progress with informal testing of their own.

With adequate parental involvement, every child can probably obtain “a good education” in any public school–BUT only if at least one adult in that child’s life is willing to make the necessary effort, every step of the way.

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