Handholding all the way to an Education

This is part two in a three part series concerning support for students. The first part covered formal support systems; the second part covers negatively enabling students.

Negatively enabling students is the proper education term for what unfortunately happens in difficult situations when students need help and guidance. Educators are trained to empower students, but enabling, or 'hand holding' is often what happens. Empowering students gives students expectations and allows them to face consequences of choices they make. Negatively enabling is when adults care more about a problem than students, normally teenagers, and try to fix the problem for them. Empowering leads to self-determination; negatively enabling leads to apathetic students.

In late night adult discussions surrounding education, everyone from parents to superintendents is accused of hand holding. Just like support systems, hand holding is born out of a desire to help, but unlike them, enabling is hidden and secretive. The cloaked parts of enabling are what make the situation unfair, to the individual student and his peers. Consider this: students hide problems incredibly well. They reluctantly talk about them. Teachers and sometimes parents remain ignorant to them. At-risk students seek help or so desperately need it that it is obvious. Between students with known and students with unknown problems, should only one receive special attention or help? Adults should empower all students, and not enable.
After all, what student has not forgotten to bring books to class, return a permission slip, turn in an assignment on time, print all parts of a paper, or bring PE clothes to school? Empowering students is hard, especially if the circumstance is small. Enabling also creeps up in grey areas; after all, who really is responsible for ensuring young students arrive at school on time or are appropriately dressed? Clearer answers (such as, who is responsible for turning late work or going to the restroom during passing periods?) may not become empowered situations if the adult attempts to 'even' the score because of other students' treatment.

Finally, the larger the stakes, the more likely parents and teachers are to enable; people turn desperate when students need a few extra percentage points or one more class to graduate. Parents and educators think, if we can just get him out of this situation that he dislikes, or she'll understand the repercussions when college hits. This might happen, but what if it does not? In supporting students, the time arrives when adults cannot be the foundation, the walls, the roof, the everything. Hand holding is different than providing support systems, and in negatively enabling students, especially in dire circumstances, we teach them lessons about how we want them to handle difficult times in life. Hand holding is not a support system; it is a short cut, and while it may not fail students immediately, it fails them eventually.

Photo credit: Mike Baird