In my professional experience as an educational counselor and in education as an industry, there is a very disturbing vocabulary phenomenon: potential. This is the new overly- competitive or out-of-touch parent’s excuse for/defense of, their child’s underwhelming academic performance. It is my belief that potential has its place in the context of positive reinforcement. In other words, when a person is dedicated and committed to achieving a specific goal(s), I say they are putting effort into realizing their potential. This takes place in the classroom, the arts and the athletic arena.
However, all too often, parents defend their children by placing blame on someone, or something else, for the child’s own obvious lack of motivation, enthusiasm and success.
It is imperative for teachers to begin to reassert themselves in the classroom as experts on education and understanding each individual student in their care. In other words, the days of parents making phone calls to change a “B+” to an “A-” or complaining that their student cannot possibly be the cause of interruption as the teacher claims, should be over. Not only does this give a false impression of a student’s intelligence, it undermines the role of the teacher and punishes them for being objective, but it also gives the student an inflated sense of accomplishment and comfort while setting him/her up for failure when the primary school years come to an end.
