Shift Of Power

In the growing process of elementary and high school students, families and schools aretwo essential institutions. In other words, parenting and schooling always play an importantrole in guiding children. Thus, only families and schools build a partnership--co-education--children can grow up perfectly. Nowadays, as the sole superpower, U.S.A. enjoys the leadingeducation system in the world. There are many successful factors in its education system, animportant one is parents get involved in the schooling. In this way, study on parentsinvolvement in American public schools is significant.This article examines parents involvement in American public schools, with the mainclue of power struggle between parents and schools. The author studies the power shiftbetween parents and schools, analyzes its success and loss experiment to help our parents gainmore and more power to involve in school education.Based on the contents, this paper is divided into five parts. The first four parts comb thewhole process of parents involvement in American public schools in detail. Before the year1852, as an agricultural society, the economic development of American was quite slow. Inorder to make a living, parents need their children slash-and burn in farmland. Parents,therefore, did not have motive as well as enough money to sent children to school. Thenparenting became the main teaching form. As funded by parents, some private schools andcharity schools also gave the way to parents to control schooling. At that time, public schoolsjust turned up and had little influence power. They wished the participation of parents as well.Thus, before the Massachusetts State issued the first Compulsory Education Law in1852,parents were the controlling hands of teaching children. Between1852to1924, the parentingpower declined, as the first Compulsory Education Law provided that children must be taughtin public schools. At the same time, with the bureaucratization of the school and thespecialization of teachers, the parent involvement became less popular as it is acknowledgedby the teaching experts that parents are the ’layman’ of teaching. So public schoolmonopolized the children teaching system. During the period of1924to1965, with the establishment of Parent and Teacher Association, parents began to realize that they have theright to join in children education. And they fighted for some power by the parent associationand accusation to challenge the authority of public schools. Meanwhile, with the developmentof teachers’ specialization, experts acknowledged that parent involvement is beneficial forboth of children and school. They welcame parent involvement, rather than resist it. In thishistorical phase, the power of children teaching shifted. Along with a series of federaleducation policies made in the year1965to1994, the federal government provided parentsthe right to participate in schooling. It turned up to an equal cooperating relationship ofparents and schools. The fifth part analyzes the success and loss experiment of parentsinvolvement in American public schools so as to help parents of our country gain more andmore power to involve in school education.