Parents Are the Best Teachers

Parents Are the Best Teachers

Nowadays, many parents try their best to let their children go to the best school and be taught by the best teachers. But what does the word “teacher” mean? Based on the Cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary, teacher is the one whose job is to teach in a school or college. In my point of view, a teacher can be anyone who gives you knowledge, experience and good advices and parents are certainly the best teachers.

It is simple to find out how important parents are for children. Foster parents brought up the famous Marilyn Monroe because her own mother had to be admitted in a mental home and 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. When she was 38, she committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.

On the other hand, we have the example of Karl Friedrich Gauss, who is noted for his wide-ranging contributions to physics, particularly the study of electromagnetism. Gauss’ mother had been teaching him numbers at the age of two. His father had played calculation games with him. Furthermore, Gauss had an educated uncle who taught him sophisticated math at an early age.

But how can parents teach their children really well? 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 sees his parents always express their admiration to his grandmother or even an old woman in the street. 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 undisciplined, will not realize the importance of teaching their children to be orderly and disciplined.

In general, 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 child’s character, life and future.