parents and principals as partners in creating a culture of learning

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Cicirelli (1992:54-58) maintains that in modern society parenthood becomes more
challenging because of the following reasons:
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Parents are required to master attitudes and techniques that differ
considerably from the ones they learned from their parents.
Today parents rear their children in a pluralist society, characterised by
diverse and conflicting values. Often alien values which they have to
observe and conduct their lives accordingly in order to guide the child
effectively.
Parents have to compete with several other factors that may influence the
child, for example the school, church, peers, television, movies and books.
Experts in child-rearing (education) disagree among themselves which
aggravates the confusion of parents.
From the first moments of the child's existence in the world, he announces that he
is someone who will take part in the life-world, a participation which continues to
the end of his life. Because of the child's openness and directedness to the world,
from the beginning he is actively busy actualising his given possibilities and this
-means that he is busy changing. This becoming involves a progressive and
continuous movement in the direction of the life-world of the adult (Griessel,
Louw & Swart, 1993:4-5). Becoming, as the necessary change which must arise
in the child's life, is directed to becoming a proper adult. This means that a child
must and should become different. Because the child is a human being, he is
someone who himself will become (change). As given possibilities, the structure
of his psychic life disposes the child to become grown up. Because of this, the
child is able to take an active part in his becoming. It is also an irrefutable fact
that a child, because of his essential nature, needs the help and support of an adult.