Current Need for Child Welfare. A child's need for parental and teacher care is universal. Geographical boundaries and the attitudes of a society at a given time mark tremendous differences in the provisions made to deal with deprivation of parental and teacher care, but need for parental and teacher care does not change. Neither does need for the favorable economic conditions, nor for the social supports that permit and sustain good parental and teacher functioning.
By the 1960s, however, parental and teacher involvement in the playgroup movement and a number of influential research reports (Douglas 1964) were beginning to open up the question of parental and teacher influence on children's educational achievement. The much maligned Plowden report (DBS 1967) moved the argument on dramatically by accepting and openly stating that parental and teacher attitudes, rather than wealth or status, were the foundation stones of good pupil achievement.
It is perhapsco- unfortunate that one of their very few references to taking the me1 parental and teacher role any further seems to suggest acute distrust of the ori parent on 'professional' terrain:ac en Dp It would be chilling to contemplate an image of earnest young parents holding up successions of flash-cards and waiting with growing anxiety for their child to call the 'right' response. (7-7) We agree, it would be chilling!nt- Perhaps it is unfair to criticize a report which does give high m- priority to parent-teacher communication and to the influence of parents on their children's attitudes to reading, but which las was written at a time (1975) when the idea of parental and teacher involve-nc ment in children's learning had scarcely begun to be publicly )ui canvassed.
Current Need for Child Welfare. A child's need for parental and teacher care is universal. Geographical boundaries and the attitudes of a society at a given time mark tremendous differences in the provisions made to deal with deprivation of parental and teacher care, but need for parental and teacher care does not change. Neither does need for the favorable economic conditions, nor for the social supports that permit and sustain good parental and teacher functioning.