Throughout time, there has always been a common saying of “Parents are the best teachers.” which prevails even today. While I reckon the important role of parents in the education of children, I disagree that they qualify as the best teachers, as parents tend to lack the necessary training and also fall behind the teachings of personal experience.
When we think of teachers, it is easy to believe the misconception that parents can be better than trained professionals at educating their own children, since they know their children better than anyone else. But simply knowing a child well does not nominate one for being a good teacher. The process of teaching is one of great complexity and delicacy, which often goes underestimated by many. Effective teaching requires crucial skills such as patience, deep expertise in the taught subject and even psychological knowledge. Those who have specialised in teaching are specifically trained in all of these categories, which makes them possess the necessary competencies to not only teach children successfully, but also manage them appropriately in case of misbehave. By contrast, when faced with misbehaving children, parents tend to resort to methods that can be unprofessional and even morally questionable. Furthermore, since they are not trained in this field, parents are inclined to be unaware of effective teaching strategies and as such they are incapable of simplifying difficult concepts to make them easy to understand for children. A social study conducted in 2017 showed regarding this issue showed interesting reports. The aim of the study was to determine satisfaction levels of students of 2 different groups: those who were taught by teachers at schools and those who were homeschooled and were being taught by their parents, in their educations. As such a great number of students were interviewed regarding both humanities and sciences. The results reported that while over 90% students who were taught by professionals showed high levels of satisfaction, over 70% of homeschooled children were dissatisfied with their education. When inquired about the reasons, those who were homeschooled noted that often they found it hard to understand the study material as the explanations of their parents weren’t quite helpful. They also added that sometimes their parents would get impatient with them and even punish them when they didn’t understand the lesson fast enough, which resulted with them hesitating in making it known when they have difficulty with comprehending.
Other than teacher in an academic sense, parents can also be viewed as the greatest teachers in terms of giving what’s commonly referred as “life lessons”. But this idea too, is fundamentally incorrect. Like many people, parents can be biased when they try to give moral insights. As such, the wisdoms of parents can be clouded by their own judgement, rather than taking into account the characteristics and the situation of the child. Furthermore, in most cases, personal development is not gained through mere oral advice, but through the actual experience that one develops via their own life and practice. No matter how profound the advice of a parent may be, a child is more likely to learn once they experience something on their own. A classic example to this case is one that is most likely known to all of us: let us imagine a child who plays tag with his friends and runs really fast in the process. Despite the continuous warnings of his mother, the child continues to run carelessly every time with his friends. Despite the countless times his mother explained how he will fall and hurt himself if he keeps running fast, it is only after he actually does fall one day and gets hurt that the child slows down from then on.
In conclusion, although parents have a notable impact in educating their children in both an academic and personal way, it does not equate them to being the best teachers in either sense, as the professionals with pedagogical trainings, as well as our own personal experiences prove to be a much better teacher.