Changes in the Reationship of Parents to the School and the Education of Children

This article traces some of the changes in families of schoolchildren over the last ten years. It is based on the results of research conducted by the Prague Group of School Ethnography among children at the end of their compulsory basic school education in 1992 and then repeated in 2003. The survey was concerned with the family and school situation of children, forms of teaching and work at home and in school, relationships between children in the class and strategy of choice of further education. In both cases quantitative and qualitative methods were employed: long-term stay in the school, sociological questionnaire, observation, interviews with children, teachers and parents, and written materials. Overall the sample of 5 classes from five different schools involved about a hundred children.. The article centres on selected aspects of the relationship of parents and children to school and education and their concrete manifestations in the period of search for a suitable secondary (middle - non compulsory) school.. Comparison of the similar situation of parents and children after ten years allows us to obtain a three-dimensional picture of the situation of today’s fifteen- and sixteenyear- olds and their families. Apart from some indicators that remained stable (influence of success at school, dependence of results on schoolwork or decision-making over whether to carry on with studies or not) we can observe a number of changes. Among the most important we should mention overall changes in upbringing, approach to children and the place of children in the family and in school. These were expressed in children’s greater independence, greater freedom in approach to adults, a reduced emphasis on school work and homework, and more formal evaluation of the school, school results and diplomas. There has also been a more pronounced differentiation of families. We recorded differences not just in attitudes to education, schoolwork or choice of next school, but above all in the meanings attributed to them in different families, which enter into negotiations between parents and children and also function as family-transmitted values.