Over spring break, I went back to first grade. Through a Radcliffe externship, I spent a week in the Vermont countryside, staying with a first-grade teacher and helping out in her class every day.

The 20 first-graders in the woman's classroom were cute, as first-graders tend to be. Their jackets were tiny, their smiles were huge and they still carried plastic lunch boxes. They drew pictures of their favorite animals and liked playing with blocks. They read stories about fireflies and wrote their own stories about their families and friends and about what they did last weekend.

But a good number of them had to be repeatedly reminded to flush the toilet and wash their hands after using the restroom. Some hadn't been taught how to tie their shoes and had to ask classmates to help them keep their laces knotted. And one boy had a terrible cold but didn't know how to blow his nose. He sat miserably for a while until the teacher took him outside and taught him how.

These are six-and seven-year-olds, I admit. They're not yet expected to be polite, gracious members of society. But when I chatted with my sponsor, who has taught first grade for 25 years, she said that 10 and 15 years ago, she didn't have to teach kids how to blow their noses. She didn't have to remind kids as much to wash their hands. They learned these social skills where they should learn them--from their parents, at home.

Today, she said, many parents simply don't make time for that, and as a result, she must do so in her classroom. The runny-nosed boy's parents are prominent lawyers who never spend time at home, she said. Other parents who come in to volunteer in her classroom spend time with their kids, but don't necessarily teach them simple manners such as washing their hands before eating or standing in the lunch line without pushing other children or grabbing.

What will these kids be like as adults? Somewhere along the way they'll have to pick up a modicum of social skills, or they'll be laughed at or ostracized. But what if they don't have a good teacher, like my sponsor, who fills in the gaps? She said that she now consciously thinks about teaching "politeness lessons," something that didn't cross her mind a decade ago.

Part of that problem, she said, comes from the parent-less existence television often provides. Television's influence is hard to counteract, she said. That's no surprise at any age, but looking at some of the stories the kids wrote, the power of television really struck me. One girl wrote that her mom still wasn't home last night, and so she watched television. For another girl, every story she wrote involved television in some way. And the news gets worse: the teacher said that one day, she asked a girl to bring in any book from home to look at. The girl replied that her family had no books at home.

It's true that teachers can make a difference--one afternoon, my sponsor took her kids on a community field trip to the public library. But teachers can only do so much. For children to succeed in school and in life, parents must pay attention to their kids at home. It does not matter if a child grows up with one parent or two, with a mother who works or doesn't.

What matters is that parents ask children about their day, ask if they have notes to sign and return to school, ask what homework they have. What matters is that parents tell their children to behave at the dinner table, to speak nicely to other people, to wash their hands and blow their noses. What matters is that parents set an example for their children by displaying good social skills themselves and reading at home.

Without a good family example, there's really not much teachers can do. I worry about a society where children, however sweet--and many of these first-graders were adorable--cannot acquit themselves without making those around them uncomfortable. As always, classroom education, while critical, is secondary: the real learning process must begin at home.

Sarah J. Schaffer's column appears on alternate Fridays.