To Bring Parents to School

F Junior High was in session today. In Japan this is typically called “lesson observation day”: parents come to school and observe how their children are learning. After they observed the first period, parents moved to the gym for a PTA general assembly and discussed how they could support club activities at the school.

While I am not a parent, I argue that parents have more to contribute to the school. I am sure that there are parents who can offer the school extra academic resources (e.g., expertise in certain subjects and interesting life experiences from which students can learn). Put in Vygotskian language, parents—together with the school—can extend and enrich the zone of proximal development of students. But it seems that most parents in the neighborhood in which the school is located are not quite ready to participate in this collective enterprise...