Parents as ‘educators’: languages of education, pedagogy and ‘parenting’

Abstract

In this article, we explore to what extent parents should be ‘educators’ of their children. In the course of this exploration, we offer some examples of these practices and ways of speaking and thinking, indicate some of the problems and limitations they import into our understanding of the parent–child relationship, and make some tentative suggestions towards an alternative way of thinking about this relationship.

Keywords:

• parenting
• parents
• upbringing
• education

Notes

1. A note on gender: throughout this discussion, we have chosen to use the gender-neutral term ‘parents’. This is largely because, in our discussion of language, we wish to draw attention to other, non-gendered aspects of the discourse and practice of ‘parenting’. However, in doing so, we are not trying to ignore the point that, as Ruddick (1989) warns, to speak of ‘parenting’ obscures [the] historical fact that ‘even now, and certainly through most of history, women have been the mothers’ (45).

2. It is customary in this school to exchange information (brief notes, announcements, sometimes letters) between parents and teachers by putting these in the so-called ‘to and fro-portfolio’.

3. In Belgium and the Netherlands, the (folklore) figure who brings candy and toys for children is not Santa Claus (USA) or Father Christmas (UK), but St. Nicholas. And since the latter's name-day (sometimes it is said it is his birthday) is the 6 December, the big happening for children takes place either on the 5 December in the evening (mostly so in the Netherlands) or the 6 December in the morning (St. Nicholas having delivered everything overnight). St. Nicholas is accompanied by one or more ‘Black Petes’, who (on one interpretation) are black because of crawling up and down chimneys to deliver children's presents. The idea is that children put their shoes in front of the chimney, with a carrot or a lump of sugar for St. Nicholas’ horse (with further regional differences as to what is put in the shoe and for whom). On the evening of the 5 December, or the morning of the 6 December, St. Nicholas and his Black Petes bring presents for the children – the evidence of their really having been there being that the carrot (or whatever is left there for the horse) has disappeared. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas#Celebration_in_Belgium_and_the_Netherlands for more information; retrieved 2008-12-09.) Until not very long ago, the figure of St. Nicholas was also (and sometimes probably still is) used by parents as someone who, with the threat of withholding presents, urges children to be good. Children who have been bad do not get any presents, so the folklore goes (but in practice, all children turn out to be good), but rather get the rod (a rather clear symbol of being punished), or may even get stuffed into a jute sack by the Black Petes and taken off to Spain (where St. Nicholas is believed to come from). Recently, this ‘punitive’ atmosphere surrounding the figure of St. Nicholas has changed significantly, undoubtedly because of larger changes in the conception of how to raise children, though it is still present in some forms.

4. Children can put their shoes in front of the chimney from the moment St. Nicholas has arrived. (He arrives by steamboat, usually 2 weeks before 5 December or 6 December.) The idea of putting shoes out some time before the 5 December or 6 December is, e.g. to give St. Nicholas a letter specifying what toys one would like this year. So children can put their shoes out on the evening before his arrival, leaving the letter in their shoes for St. Nicholas and/or his Petes to pick up. It is customary for him to leave some candy for the children (such as a chocolate figure of St. Nicholas) as proof that he was there. Traditions differ, of course, and one element of difference is how many times children can put out their shoes between his arrival and the real event.