Parents are the best teachers. Do you agree or disagree?

It is simple to find out how important parents are for children. A visit to an orphanage is proof. The children wear a lost look, approach any visitor with eagerness, and desperately want to be loved. Foster parents brought up the famous Marlyn Monroe because her own mother had to be admitted in a mental home. Her father never gave her his name. This total lack of parental guidance made hers a life of humiliation, insult and torture throughout her childhood and adolescence. Even when she was a top star in Hollywood, memories of a disturbed childhood continued to haunt her. She had a string of failed marriages. But she finally committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. She was 38 when she died. Her real name was Norma Jean Baker but she did not like to mention it. On the other hand, we have the example of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, whose early upbringing under the able guidance of his mother Amita Sen, father, Dr. Ashutosh Sen and maternal grandfather Kshitimohan Sen made it possible for him to win, among many international awards and recognition, the Nobel Prize for Economics. His father motivated him with the greatest of human values like honesty in life, integrity of character and the determination to stick to his roots. This makes him come back to Shanti Niketan to see me and to ride around the town in a bicycle like he used to do in his youth. Fame and fortune have not changed him at all, informs Amartya Sens mother Amita Sen, who is still alive. Interestingly, when Amartya Sen was only two years old, his parents left for London leaving him along with his sister Supoorna under the care of his maternal grandparents at Shanti Niketan. The natural surroundings of the small town and institution set up by Tagore, the lessons he learnt from his grandparents, and later, from his parents, shaped Amartya into the man he has today become. He looked upon his grandfather as his greatest idol in life. Nature too, has had a deep impact on his upbringing, says Sens mother. Indian cricket captain Saurav Gangulys parents Chandi and Nirupa could have easily allowed their two sons to turn into spoilt brats of a stinking rich family. But they did not. Nirupa has been instrumental in correcting her younger son Saurav when he used every prank in the book to avoid his teacher and his studies. The father instilled in the boys the love for sports because this is one family that is crazy about sports be it cricket or football, says Sauravs mother. Instead of buying his sons luxury cars and memberships to elite clubs, their father invested in a gym right at home so that I could supervise them as they worked out, he reminisces. Today, the Ganguly couple has every right to be proud of their sons international achievements. Teachers cannot take the place of parents in a childs life because: (a) Teachers are permitted to teach given subjects from a given syllabus within a classroom situation. (b) They are bound to the prescribed rules and regulations of the school, college or university. (c) Teachers remain with the children for around eight hours for five or six days in a week. So, time and space limit their interaction with students. (d) Since teachers rarely meet the students they teach beyond the school premises, their understanding of the nature and mindset of the children they teach is limited to school hours and school discipline. They have almost no way of knowing how these children behave at home, or, with their neighbours, etc. (e) Teachers generally teach an entire class of children where one-to-one communication is absent. So, they find it difficult to tackle individual problems of a child from a large group. (f) Teachers are mainly concerned with the teaching of academic subjects and have no time to instruct children on the more important aspects of life such as values, principles etc, except in an indirect manner. Parents teach less by telling children what they should or should not do, and more by example. A father who wakes up late, will never be able to teach his children to wake up early. A mother who lies all the time, cannot expect her children to be honest in their speech. Parents, who are disordered and indisciplined, will not realise the importance of teaching their children to be orderly and disciplined. Value education is the education we receive from our parents. Academic education

is the education we get from our teachers. Parents who are cowed by temper tantrums and screaming defiance are only inviting more of the same from their children. An alcoholic father is very likely to have an alcoholic son. Research on marriage and divorce has shown that children of divorced parents are very likely to have broken marriages themselves. Why parents are the best teachers 1. Parents have subtle ways of humbling you, of reminding you of your origins, perhaps by showing up at the moment of your greatest glory and reminding you where you went wrong. 2. Parents can be understanding and accept the more difficult stages as necessary times of growth for the child. 3. Parents don't make mistakes because they don't care, but because they care so deeply. (Berry Brazelton) 4. Parents through their own behavior and the values, by which they live, provide direction for their children. 5. Values like honesty, integrity, discipline, obedience, loyalty, and reverence for elders are passed on by parents to their children. 6. Parents can offer their help by suggesting and locating resources likely to be unfamiliar to children, such as people, books, and materials that can be useful. 7. Parents are like shuttles on a loom. They join the threads of the past with threads of the future and leave their own bright patterns as they go. British novelist Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) rightly said that parents cannot expect advice to have the same force upon their children as experience has upon themselves. It would be apt to conclude with Fred Rogers quote. He said, parents are like shuttles on a loom. They join the threads of the past with threads of the future and leave their own bright patterns as they go. Parents teach in the toughest school in the world: The School for Making People. You are the board of education, the principal, the classroom teacher, and the janitor, wrote Virginia Satir (Columbia World of Quotations, 1996.) Are parents the best teachers? It depends on what one means by the term teaching. If teaching is limited to elementary lessons in the three rs, namely reading, writing and arithmetic, then, formal educators in school would perhaps be considered the best teachers. Teachers who teach us in schools and colleges are educators. They are necessary for the formal education of all children. But they are no substitute for parents. They never can replace parents in the shaping of the childs character, life and future.

Do you know what the word teacher means ? Based on the Cambridge advanced learners dictionary, teacher is the one whose job is to teach in a school or college. In my point of view, that definition is only one side of this word. A teacher can be anyone who gave you knowledge, experience and good advices. Therefore, if you wonder who is our best teacher, I will have no hesitation to say those are our parents who taught us the first lessons and many things in our life in the best way. First of all, parents are the best teacher who taught us the first lessons when we were children. What are the first lessons? Those are the lesson how to crawl, how to stand, how to speak or how to walk which are the most important lessons in our whole life. Therefore, you have to agree that , with their love and caring, no one in the world can be the best teacher as our parents. When you were only a child, the ones who were always by your side, talked to you with all the sweatest words and the ones who were so happy to burst into tear when you spoke the first word papa or mama , they are your parents. Day by day, your parents were the leaders and also the instructors for your fist steps into the outside world. Therefore, you have to agree that , with their love and caring, no one in the world can be the best teacher for all the first lessons as our parents. Furthermore, our parents are also the best teacher to teach us many things in our life with the most efficient way. At school or university, we were given many knowledge in many subjects, such as maths, literature, geology or even ethics lessons which taught you what you should do and what you mustnt do. But all of these were only what you heard in theories. As a research pointed out, people remember 90% of what they do, 75% of what they see and 20% of what they hear. Therefore, a child will be easy to learn about the respect the old if he see his parents always express their admiration to his grandmother or even an old woman in the street. Also, a moral lesson cant teach him about kindness better than his own parents who always helped others when they were in trouble. In an automatic way, parents become the teachers who we can learn about many things in life with the best reality, their actions become the model for all of us to follow. In general, the teachers in school or university give us knowledge in many fields. But the best teacher that we have are our parents who taught you from the first lesson when you are child to many things in your life with all their love and caring. You should be set great store by all of those lessons which will be with you in your whole life.

Parents, undoubtly can teach and bring their children up as a duty. Some people think that parents in their parenthood, can teach their children better than teachers. Others may argue that parents would not fulfill the job of teachers because of educational methods and knowledge. This essay will look at if parents can even do better than teachers when they teach their children. On the one hand, parents would be better than teachers in educating their children for several reasons. Firstly, children may strongly believe or listen to their parents because of their nature relationship. For example, a little boy may naturally happily greet other people everytime he meets just because their parents teach him to do that. Secondly, it may be easier for parents to expect their children to obey. For instance, a father can tell his little daughter to get up earlier everyday which is not easy for teachers. Another reason is that children may find that they can only share their personal problems to their parents. The closer parents and children are, the easier parents can educate their children. As a result, parents are ideal people to educate their children. On the other hand, teachers would do much better than parents in educating children because of many reasons. One reason is that teachers are trained for teaching, with their knowledge and teaching methods, they can help to educate children more effectively. For example, parents may easily find out a math solution for children, but they find it hard to explain. Whereas teachers, with their teaching methods, can find it easy to get children to find out the solution themselves. Moreover, teachers also know how to encourage children to learn more effectively, while parents probably do not. For instance, teachers always explain why children need to learn and tell them learning is an important duty. While parents often mistakenly encourage their children to do homework by a bar of chocolate, or a trip in the coming weekend. As a result, teachers may do better than parents in educating children. In conclusion, educating children is not a simple duty. However, if parents and teachers can work together to fulfill, we have the right to believe that our new generations will be as expected.