Learn to escape the parent trap

Jonathan Jansen: Setting a good example trumps maintaining discipline.

My Dad was a hawker. In fact, he was many things. He once laboured as a domestic worker.For many years he drove a van, collecting and delivering laundry for Nannucci Dry Cleaners, in Cape Town. Towards the end of his career he was a messenger for a Cape Town shipping company. He ended his life as a full-time missionary serving poverty-stricken people in the Karoo.

But what I remember about this man called Abraham (whose wife, really, was Sarah, who bore a son called Isaac, really) was the enormous impact he had on my life-choices as a child growing up on the dangerous Cape Flats.

Some time ago one of my doctoral students conducted an impressive study on 10 of the most successful black scientists in South Africa.

She wanted to know why these impressive scholars obtained PhDs despite the social and educational disadvantage that they endured during the years of apartheid.

More bluntly, why did these scientists achieve the highest qualifications in their fields when so many of their peers did not?

What my student found was that there were many factors that accounted for the success of the 10 scientists, but it was hard to nail down the factors common to all of them.

But there was one thing that did stand out, and that was a powerful parental figure in the homestead.

The parent herself did not necessarily have much education, but valued education highly.

The parent worked night and day to ensure that the meagre resources were available to enable her child to succeed. The parent insisted on routines such as homework and school attendance, no matter what.

Whenever the child even thought about skipping school or escaping homework, there stood the parent, larger than life, to prevent the child straying into waywardness.

For all 10 scientists, it was parental authority that made the difference.

I have seen the converse to be true so often in my work with young people. Show me a troubled boy or a traumatised girl, and nine times out of 10 I will be able to show you an absentee father or a negligent mother. In an era in which so many of our schools do not present teachers as powerful, influential role models - who often compensate for parents' inadequacies, or complement their role - mothers and fathers become even more crucial in determining the fate of their children.

Which brings me back to Abie, as they called my father, and his educational influence on our lives as children. Perhaps it was the pride with which he referred to his "JC" (junior certificate - then a serious qualification) from Livingstone High School that impressed me. Maybe it was the undisguised joy that he showed when his children did well at school. I suspect it was his unusual way of telling you that "there was room for improvement" even when you scored full marks in a test. It could have been the memory games he would play with us as children. He demonstrated the enormous capacity of his memory by reciting Bible verses or recalling the registration numbers of the cars of all his friends.

I remember how, when I was in primary school, he would be sipping tea and, without warning, throw a line at me: "A stitch in time .". I would jump to attention: ". saves nine." But then my trouble started when he shot back: "And what does that mean?"

Whatever it was, he had the knack of making sure that, as a child, you understood the value and the joy of education.

Most parents get this part wrong. They lecture children endlessly on doing their homework. They throw major tantrums when the report-card is not what they expected from their children. They threaten kids with everything from no more weekends with friends to pulling out the TV cables.

Discipline is good, but when children equate education with threats, and schooling with punishment, do not expect them to enjoy learning and aspire to further education.

It is the simple things parents do between tests and examinations, the marvel they express observing a loaded plane lift off the runway, the questions they pose about a scientific discovery, the joy they demonstrate when recalling a favourite poem, the delight they exude when solving a puzzle.

For parents to inspire children to learn, they do not need to be highly schooled themselves. All they need do is enjoy learning themselves.