All parents should be required to volunteer time to their children s schools

Nowadays when more and more school emphasize the importance the parents’ involvement in school for the purpose of building an education community, the statement tried to propose a mandatory requirement on parents’ voluntary of time to their children’s schools. I agree with the opinion that all parents should be encouraged to volunteer time for school community, however found it overstated by noticing some circumstances which will be undermined by the statement’s extremity.

By volunteering time to schools, parents bring benefits not only to school operation, but also the children and themselves. Spending time to schools will help parents understand what is happening on the children, and consequently build a strong emotional connection with them. For example, mothers who volunteer for school drama club will know which show is rehearsing in schools, and will recognize the school superstar. Their children will feel delighted when the mothers can response such familiar topics to them. A father who spends time assisting school soccer coaching would offer him an opportunity to have fun together with the son, and also give immediate feedback to the boy.

Moreover, family has become the extension of school education. Encouraging parents to volunteer time to school can build bridge between family and school, and make sure the school learning outcome can be extended consistently at home. For example, according to the curriculum, students are required to collect local wastrel water sample for further research in a science class. Bothe teacher and students find it hard to fulfill the task. However, the academic coordinator told the teacher that one parent of a child within the class works in the local wastrel management office; the coordinator get to know this information during the parent’s volunteer in school. Then the science teacher found this parent. Under his help, the class successfully fulfilled the task. The example well-illustrates that parents’ devotion serves an important role in building the education community.

However, disadvantages for requiring parents’ volunteering time to school cannot be ignored. First of all, parents are not familiar with the school work, and sometimes bring counterproductive effort to the school professions. I have read an interesting story from the local newspaper. A school librarian complained, parents volunteered to library collection for a weekend, but afterwards it took the librarian a whole week to check and bring every book back to their correct place. In other word, school does not need all parents to volunteer time since their devotion could be limited.

Also, in most students’ families, both parents work full-time, and therefore leave them very limited time to spend on school. Such a requirement will bring pressure to those families. Alternatively, parents could help the school or education community in other ways, like devoting resources and raising advices.
In sum, all parents volunteer to their children’s school could be a positive advices but could not be required as mandatory.