The School-Home Partnership - Part 1: A Match Made in Heaven?

For most of us when we think about the term partnership, our minds conjure up thoughts in the business realm and legal arena. Yet, the concept has its roots in the Torah when it describes the relationship between the first man and his wife, Adam and Chava.

HaRav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch Z”L calls the two parent concept as the partnership ordained by Heaven. Hashem chose to provide two parents for each child, that conception and child rearing requires a father and a mother. HaRav Hirsch further describes the partnership based upon the phrase in the Torah, Ezer K’negdo a description of Chava as a helpmate, “opposed to him or over against him”. The phrase implies that Adam and Chava were different from each other. Hence, the message is, perfection in the task of child rearing will not be achieved by two very similar individuals striving towards the same goal, but rather through two people complementing each other with different skills and talents. Perfection is obtained when both partners unleash their G-d given gifts upon the common goal, raising this child.

HaRav Hirsch contends that the two-parent paradigm is meant to be a prototype to be shared in other walks of life. For example, the school-home partnership, parents and teachers working together to properly educate a child. Actually, connecting the parent partnership to the home-school relationship makes sense since the original divinely ordained plan for education was parents educating their own children. The school concept came along many years later during the times of the Second Bais HaMikdash. Hence, the new educational format needed to emulate as much as possible the original concept. Therefore, we can label our current educational paradigm as the Home-School partnership where each party brings unique talents, skills and perspectives to benefit the education of the child.

Three important points for the success of educating children flow from this discussion. Firstly, when it’s time for a child to enter school and the parents move over to provide the school with access to him, this change is not a signal for parents to abdicate their responsibilities of education to the school. Secondly, the school has to recognize parents as active partners and treat them that way. Finally, both partners need to define clearly the expectations they have of each other. As in every good partnership, the strengths of each partner should be taken into consideration when developing expectations.

Regarding the last point, parent expectations of the school seem to be well defined. However, the expectations upon the home can be more complex because of the diversity of roles within each home and the diversity among homes. Hence, school personnel needs to carefully craft expectations for each home in order for the partnership to thrive and the education of each child to be perfect.