“The Implicit Contract”
Abstract
Havighurst (1970) talks of an implicit contract between the home and the school. By this he means that –
The parents contract to prepare their children for school entrance, both cognitively and affectively. They further contract to keep him in school and to make home conditions appropriate for his success in school. The school contracts to receive the child, teach him as well as it can, taking account of his strengths and weaknesses and the ways he can learn most effectively…the education of the child is successful only when both parties carry out their obligations fully.
…Sometimes, one or both parties fail to understand the nature of these obligations, (p.313)
Watts (1972) notes that this could be particularly true of “the socially disadvantaged parents of this country, nearly all of whom fail to meet the terms of the contract”, but points out that the schools also fail “by failing to understand how the children of these families can learn most successfully”.
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