Argument Paper

Fernando Cuevas

ENC 1145

Professor Frederick

7 December 2012

Word count: 1600

They Can Not Do It by Their Own

It was my first year of college, and being 18, I was wondering what I did wrong in school that I had such bad grades in college. I told my mom I was going to be a good student in college, but this wasn’t happening. I struggled a lot in my first year of college because I didn’t have any study habit. This lack of study habits was due to my parents, who never taught me how to study and how to do homework when I was a child. Every time I came back from school, my mom checked my agenda if my elementary school teacher assigned something. If I had a test or homework, my mom only supervised me if I was studying or doing the homework. And my dad never was there to help me because he was working all day long. Clearly this is why I struggled in my first year in college. I never received an education on how to study in the proper way when I was younger because they never were involved in the correct way. If parents are involved in their child’s homework, the child’s performance in school should be better, but there are right ways to do it and it is most beneficial in elementary school.

Some people believe, as my parents thought on the beginning, that the best way to teach their children is to have them be totally responsible for their own work. They think the correct way to do it is by only supervising them, and that this will make them responsible in the future. They believe that the homework is for the child and it is the child’s responsibility. They fear that getting involved will spoil the child or make them dependent. But parental involvement is important because any child, especially in elementary school, needs to be taught how to study and how to do homework, and create on him good study habits. Research shows, however, that parental involvement of the correct type can be very important in the younger years.

Before we look at the benefits of parental...