PSU professors encourage active parental involvement, but only to a certain extent.The media has coined a phrase for the overactive parents of today’s students. They call them “helicopter” parents, after the way they hover over their children, ready to swoop down at the first sign of trouble. Employers and educators at every level come in contact with parents that refuse to stay out of their kids’ lives, but some professors feel that a certain level of participation can be quite helpful.
Lynn Rudmin-Chong is an English professor who has had a few “less-than-helpful” interactions with students’ parents. One such incident involved a student in danger of failing after missing every Friday class in the semester. The course had a strict attendance policy that the student did not follow because “his parents wanted him to be home every Friday.” Of course, this meant he would miss at least a third of the classes that semester.
Rudmin-Chong received numerous phone calls at her home from the student’s outraged father. She claims the father yelled and swore at her over the phone eventually causing her husband to get involved and take the last phone call asking, “How do you think you could ever get what you want by being obnoxious and swearing?”
These are the types of interactions that have been giving concerned parents a bad rep for years. Other experiences among some of Plymouth’s English professors include threatening to complain to the dean over the content covered in class, parents speaking with advisors to decide what courses their son or daughter would be taking next semester, and a parent calling every single week to check up on a daughter’s progress after the student had explicitly requested that the professor not speak to her parent.
In fact, teachers are required by law to not reveal any academic information such as grades and attendance records to anyone without written consent from the student. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) outlines what can and cannot be revealed regarding educational records. It states that once a student turns eighteen, or attends a school beyond high school, the rights given to their parents are then transferred to them.
Of course, it is up for everyone to decide on their own whether exceptionally active parents are causing more harm than good, but it seems as though even after these somewhat negative occurrences, professors are still more than willing to meet and talk with students’ parents.
The key seems to be finding a balance between being overly-involved and not being there at all. Paul Rogalus found it to be “actually kind of helpful” when a father had called on a few separate occasions to discuss the classes his son should take next semester, and Robin DeRosa said, “My only contact with parents has been mostly very positive, and I generally wish we had more, rather than less.”
DeRosa enjoys meeting parents once she gets to know a student, and wishes they would come around more often than move-in day and graduation, but that doesn’t mean she advocates constant involvement.
“All in all, it’s probably a good thing that students at college get to live their own lives, and that parents don’t get in the way too much of the students’ ability to navigate their own relationships with their professors and their work.” They should be involved, but they shouldn’t try and take over.