Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Parents are the best teac

TOEFL Writing Sample: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Parents are the best teachers. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

Student Author: Wendy

We all agree that our parents were the first teachers we had. They taught us to walk and talk when we were infants. Parents, without doubt, are two of the most indispensable teachers in one’s life, but are they the best teachers? I mean, everyone in his or her lifetime will encounter dozens of teachers. Some of them are fantastic, yet some fail to fulfill their duties properly. There is no reason why one’s first teachers are the best teachers one can get. Some parents are not even good people, so how can they be the best teachers?

A couple needs no training or examinations to become parents, so we cannot guarantee their qualification as parents, and thus leave open the possibility that those underqualified parents could possibly be their children’s best teachers. I heard that in some remote place a father taught his 2-year-old son to smoke, and a pair of parents told their primary school child to fight and hurt his classmates. For this kind of people, parenting is the last thing in the world they deserve. Unfairly, however, any couple can become parents by giving birth to a baby.

Some parents meet the preconditions to be good parents and some are even excellent professional teachers, though, raising a child can still be a tough challenge. This is because parents who pursue a self-fulfilling life or successful career, despite their individual excellence, often cannot take good care of their children. Parenting is a quite demanding job. Nearly all of the parents have their regrets for failing to better fulfill their parental responsibilities.

Only painstaking and self-sacrificing parents have an opportunity to be the best teachers; they must have a strong spirit, positive attitude, and willingness to sacrifice their life after work and even their career to accompany their kids; their fair personalities set good examples for their children. Therefore, these parents, beyond doubt, are the best teachers for their children.