Funding for education is usually the first thing to get the shaft from the U.S. government, so a lot of responsibility gets handed to parents and individual teachers. In the case of a few schools in the Dallas, Texas area, schools think there’s an additional problem-how to involve parents when they don’t speak the same language as the administrators?

“Our goal was to show parents that the school system should not be a frightening place,” said assistant principal [of Watson Technology Center in Garland ISD] Debbie Sanders. “Often times, there’s a language barrier and they’re not comfortable being here.”

The answer that many schools came up with was to aggressively recruit Latino parents for bilingual workshops. At these workshops, the parents were coached on how to help educate their kids even if they weren’t English speakers themselves.

Maria Benavente is one of the parents who attended a recent session at Watson. Like a student, she raised her hand and asked questions when the teacher showed the parents how to conduct a simple science experiment that demonstrates what objects float.

The teachers also showed the similarities of science vocabulary words in English and Spanish and handed out instructions for taking a “science walk” or conducting a “science baking experiment” at home.

Parental involvement is definitely a huge factor in how well kids learn, but we can’t help but feel a little icky about the tone of the workshops. The whole “let’s teach the newcomers how to be good parents thing” is presumptuous, if not offensive.

“The expectations south of the border are very different. You go, you leave your child, and anything that happens in the school is the school’s problem and anything that happens at home, you take care of,” said Georgina Tezer, community specialist for the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school district. “The first thing that needs to be done is to reteach the parent how to parent in a very different environment.”

Oh, so you don’t want parents to drop their kids in the desert to be educated by wolves while tripping on cactus juice? Cause you know, it’s pretty different and ca-raaaaaazy down south of the border!

Sorry, yes, CHILDREN. EDUCATION. VERY IMPORTANT. The fact that Spanish is now the predominant language in many parts of America means that yeah, there will be problems when people don’t speak each others’ language, and we all need to overcome that with a lot of cultural ambassadorship and outreach etc, but can we drop the patronizing tone, please?