8 ms·

What teachers want to tell parents

62 points by munin 15y ago

lucisferre 15y ago
A friend of mine is a teacher and the stories are similar. Granted she teaches at a school where she is largely dealing with spoiled rich brats (and by that I mostly mean the parents, to say nothing of the kids). Still I'm not surprised that stories are typical. For their part my parents largely stayed out of my education. I was not a good student but all the teachers said I was a very smart kid. My parents were satisfied with that but always did whatever they could to encourage me to be a better student. In the end though, nothing really changed until I chose to be a better student and work harder. The life lessons of being responsible for my own situation and my own education stuck with me and were good for me. As for teachers heaping all of the blame on defensive parents. I'd suggest they would do good to remember many parents were students once too. They remember just how traumatic school can be (as it often was for me) and how vicious and horrible a teacher can seem when they decide to single out a student for punishment. I can hardly blame some of them for acting defensively. Stop the "poor me" routine and try some empathy instead. My parents were perfectly happy to let me learn my own life lessons, but occasionally a teacher decided to make it their life's mission to "fix" me. Those experiences were usually terrible. In the end the best teachers simply chose to believe in me and looked extra disappointed when I didn't try hard. That was usually punishment enough. Honestly, I'd say the biggest problems with education these days are not the parent, or the teachers but rather are systematic. I think we'd all be better off focusing on that if we wan't it to improve, rather than parents blaming the teachers and vice-versa.
- wccrawford 15y ago
  The teachers that decide to 'fix' a student would never listen to your advice, and they're the ones that need it. They obviously feel they have a holy mission and no common sense is going to stop them from doing it.
mrbgty 15y ago
Wow, that article is really one sided. Even if I accept the fact that it's all true, the teacher perspective doesn't seem to consider the parents perspective at all. Teachers really don't know the kids as well as the parents do. This isn't the teachers fault, its because they're having to control 20 kids at once. Still, I've noticed as a volunteer many times where children have gotten reprimanded for doing something by one teacher when they were only following directions given by another. Because these children really cannot stand up for themselves, often times they don't know how to respond which can result in a number of different behaviors. The burden of maturity should be falling on the adults (teachers and parents), not the children and yet so often its the children who respond in the most mature way. Yes parents should not be so defensive when discussing their children with teachers, but at the same time those parents SHOULD be the advocate for their child who does not yet know how (or have the power to) to stand up for themselves.
- scarmig 15y ago
  The teacher-student-parent relationship isn't adversarial. When you say that parents should advocate for the side of the child, you make it seem like it's a sports game or trial. It isn't. Imagine you take your child to the doctor, and the doctor says that your child drinking several milkshakes a day is bad for his health and leading him to obesity. If the parent went on and on making excuses for him--"Billy gets stressed out by school and needs milkshakes to unwind!" we would rightfully mock the parent. But when teachers give feedback about how they've observed Billy picking on other kids, parents require proof that their special snowflake would ever do such a terrible thing and, when proven, start looking for reasons that the other kid brought it on himself. Everyone's on the same side, here. And to be fair, though doctors and teachers are both professionals, the higher status and respect given to doctors is in many ways earned through very hard work. But teachers are professionals too, not ex-convict nanny babysitters who are out to get your kid, and their suggestions and criticisms deserve serious consideration.
  - stonemetal 15y ago
    The teacher-student-parent relationship isn't adversarial. How is it not on some level? You get called to come down to the school. Little Billy has been fighting again. You get there the teacher claims your son was bullying Joe. Billy says Joe was bullying him and he was just defending himself and that the teacher was writing on the chalk board with this back turned so he didn't see anything.
peteretep 15y ago
> One of my biggest pet peeves is when I tell a mom something her son did and she turns, looks at him and asks, "Is that true?" Well, of course it's true. I'd almost certainly ask my son that. Seems like a good way to get them talking about the issue, and hear any mitigating factors they might consider. A teacher who took that as a me questioning their authority ... grow up and deal with it.
- mavelikara 15y ago
  While I agree with many points the article raised, > Well, of course it's true. I just told you. this is a very dangerous attitude for a teacher to have. Aristotle said that men have more teeth than women, but that does not make it so.
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    My mother is a teacher, and she has several anecdotes about teachers falling into traps like this. My favorite: Teacher, to parent: "(You need to listen to me.) Who do you think knows your child better? Me, or you!?"
    - mavelikara 15y ago
      I was not advocating taking the child's word over the teacher's. What I found disturbing, as I explained elsewhere in the thread, is the teacher getting upset by the very act of me asking my child's opinion about the incident at hand.
  - slmbrhrt 15y ago
    They're not speaking as a teacher, but as a person with integrity, someone who endeavors to tell only the truth, especially in a situation as grave as the discipline of a child under their watch.
    - ZipCordManiac 15y ago
      They are human like the rest of us, good and bad. Do not assume integrity simply because of somebodies profession.
jinushaun 15y ago
Growing up, the "bad" kids were always the ones with parents defending their kids' bad behavior or saying it's false. The "good" kids were the ones with parents who accepted that their kid fucked up. People don't like to be called out on their bad parenting.
- sin7 15y ago
  Whenever I got in trouble, my father promised to bring hell and the wrath of a thousand demons once he got me home. It made the teachers happy and brought little smirks to their faces. But he made his own decisions and rarely was I punished.
sun123 15y ago
OK. I have seen a bigger problem. The teacher asked for a student's record notes "in a harsh way" and "threatened" to give her low grades. The student eventually committed suicide leaving a suicide note saying "This teacher is responsible for my death". Later the teacher spent days in jail.
- gaius 15y ago
  Url?
watmough 15y ago
I think there's a move towards home-schooling, at least here in Texas, partly due to the broken-ness of the public school system. Sure, there's some great teachers, but there's also a large number who garner poor results year after year and are never fired. The problems of offensive parents and unruly medicated children are obviously pervasive. The article doesn't even touch on why, with huge unemployment, and massively expensive college costs, children might as well give up hope of using education to attain the standard of living their parents were able to attain.
- pnathan 15y ago
  College isn't that expensive if you don't go to the big-name schools. Further, being uneducated is a nice way to assure you'll have a hard job life. At least being educated gives you some ability to get ahead.
adamtmca 15y ago
While I'm sympathetic to the struggle teachers have, the line about taking advice from your child's teacher like you'd take advice from your lawyer or doctor really irked me. You can choose your lawyer, choose your doctor, choose your auto mechanic etc. You can take their advice, look for someone different or just seek a second opinion. For parents with children in public school they have no choice who teaches their children.
- mtviewdave 15y ago
  My parents would always meet with the principal before the school year started, to discuss who would be teaching my sister and me. They even got my sister transferred to a different teacher mid-year at one point, because she couldn't make it work with the teacher she had (I had had the same teacher myself incidentally; it wasn't that the teacher was bad, but that different teachers work better for different students). I can't speak for everywhere, of course, but my parents absolutely had a choice as to who would teach their children.
- bradfa 15y ago
  Well, if you can't afford private doctors or lawyers, you get what the government provides when you are in dire need of doctor or lawyer services. You're stuck with what the state or other overseeing entity is willing to provide. If you want someone better, you pay for it personally. Get arrested, can't afford your own lawyer, you get one for free provided by the state. You don't get to choose. Get really sick and rushed to the hospital, you get a doctor for free provided by the state or hospital. You don't get to choose. Car breaks, tough shit. State's not going to pay to fix it. Ride the government subsided bus. Lose your job, get welfare and food stamps. Go find another one yourself. Same goes for education. Don't like your kid's teacher or school, go pay for a private school or tutor or home school. That's how everything in life is. If you don't like what's provided by your government for "free," go pay for your own. "Free" as in you are required to pay taxes, it's compulsory. Same way you pay for public defenders for those who can't afford (or don't want) to hire their own lawyers, you will pay for public schools for those who can't afford (or don't want) private ones. Deal with it.
  - 15y ago
tomjen3 15y ago
After reading that I can see why he hates parents. Not because the parents are right but above all never talk negatively about the teacher to the child and because I say so it is true shows an entitlement issue on the part of the teacher (bordering on the nacisistic). Respect is earned and if someone is completely unable to get respect when he has to actually answer for what he has done he doesn't dserve the respect in the first place. I have had amazing teachers I have had teachers who were bad and techers who were inbetween. All of them have been wrong on occasion (no surprise, they are human after all) but the only ones I ever lost respect for were does who didn't admit it (or those who blamed their students). Kids are smarter than you think.
- DifE-Q 15y ago
  If you are a parent are you entitled? -- The answer is Yes. You have certain rights, responsibilities and trust vested in you by society for that child. WHEN you give your child up to the school system, you divest those rights, responsibilities and trust to the school system. And it is true, respect is earned - for people; but not position. I respected very few of my teachers individually. However I respected the office that any one of them held and I gave respect to all of them no matter if I respected them as a person or not. This is both right and wise.
maxharris 15y ago
I grew up in a small town with an "above average" public school: nice buildings, all classes were ~20 students or less, etc. Yet my experience has led me to believe that K-12 didn't matter. I learned to read at home, so they didn't give me that. I was constantly stifled; from my perspective as a child, I saw that my own interests were almost systematically kept out of reach (as an adult, I can see far further as to why and how this situation came to be - but at the time, all I could do is to see their chains and rebel). I was routinely in trouble from sixth grade on up. Remember those end-of-year class trips you went on? They never let me go because I was such trouble! I graduated high school with a D average. The one thing they did do is to set back my educational development by about three or four years. Once I was finally free, I had time to grow unhampered. I discovered that learning was actually the opposite of prison, and that it had everything to do with the things I was interested in. I studied all kinds of things independently, and when I was ready, I took a couple of calculus courses at a community college to prove that I was serious. On that basis, I was able to gain acceptance at a well-respected university, where I majored in molecular biology and graduated with distinction. If proponents of public education really cared about what was best for me, they would have left me alone. My experience shows that a K-12 education wasn't necessary to prepare me for college, or for life. Edit: I'm not saying that no child benefits from their K-12 education - it is clear that some do. But why must it be involuntary? What justifies the laws that compelled my parents to send me to a place they knew (at some level) was hurting me?
- scarmig 15y ago
  One thing I really like as a developer is that I have the ability to work part-time and from home if I choose to. If I ever have children, I'll definitely do this so I can home school my kid. Public education is efficient at what it does, but not optimal compared to an alternative world that allows all children to have a specially tailored and flexible curriculum.
- patio11 15y ago
  * What justifies the laws that compelled my parents to send me to a place they knew (at some level) was hurting me?* Benign paternalism which says "X% of students really dislike the experience of attending school. The average case for dropouts is 'totally $&$#ed.' We'll institutionalize them now because it is a darn sight cheaper than institutionalizing them later, permanently."
fuzzylizard 15y ago
The real problem today is that the majority of people view children as accessories. They put them in front of the TV and let other people raise them, i.e., teachers, sitcoms, and the internet. They don't really care about the kids. However, those kids are viewed as an extension of themselves and so any attack on the kids is an attack on them. if you say that the kid has behavioral problems, what the parent hears is that they are a bad parent/person. They don't care about the kid, they care about how it reflects on them. This is the same reason that you have parents beating up and murdering hockey coaches and referees when they pull their kid. In the mind of the parent, the call is against them. We have moved from a society were the entire village raised the kids and parents had the support, training, and coaching they needed. They were raised in an environment in which kids were actually cared for and that was passed onto new parents. Today, we move away from home, most of us don't have contact with parents, grandparents, siblings, etc and we raise kids because they either make us look good or it is simply the expected thing to do. Unfortunately, they don't actually have any understanding of how to raise kids and they are too busy to do a proper job anyway. I am a firm believer that we are getting very close to the day when we will have to issue licences before people are allowed to have kids. Not that we should police who has them, but to ensure that people have the needed support systems and knowledge in place before trying to be parents.
andrewcross 15y ago
My aunt is a teacher and these examples are bang on. However the one thing the article doesn't touch on are how terrified teachers are to make any physical contact with students, regardless of the situation. All it takes is one parent to accuse them of sexual harassment and their careers are forever tainted. Not saying all contact is fair game, but a teacher putting their arm around a child who has been hurt should not be damaging to their career. The power balance is entirely out of whack.
joshAg 15y ago
"One of my biggest pet peeves is when I tell a mom something her son did and she turns, looks at him and asks, 'Is that true?' Well, of course it's true. I just told you. And please don't ask whether a classmate can confirm what happened or whether another teacher might have been present. It only demeans teachers and weakens the partnership between teacher and parent." "If your child said something happened in the classroom that concerns you, ask to meet with the teacher and approach the situation by saying, 'I wanted to let you know something my child said took place in your class, because I know that children can exaggerate and that there are always two sides to every story. I was hoping you could shed some light for me.'" It infuriates me that the author implies that only kids can exaggerate, bend the truth, or lie. Apparently there's more than one side to every story only when the first side isn't the teacher's.
phugoid 15y ago
My son had his very first day of school today, and this article irks me. Everyone who works for a living could write a similar article about how great it would be to have unbounded trust, power and authority to carry out one's job. But that's not the way it works. My job as a parent is to protect my kids. At all costs. Riling the feathers of a self-important teacher is of no concern. This is my blood that we're talking about.
- dhyasama 15y ago
  I'm a father and yesterday was my daughter's first day of school. I don't think my job is to protect her at all costs. My job is to prepare her to be a healthy, happy, and responsible adult. Protecting her is part of that, but so is letting her fall down so she can learn to get back up. Also, she will never learn personal responsibility if I defend her at all times regardless of fault. Sometimes she is the one in the wrong and she needs to learn from that.
- kemayo 15y ago
  I don't think you should blindly defend your children, though. Be predisposed to defend them, sure, but be open to the possibility that they were in the wrong and have a lesson to learn from it. I wouldn't view my job as a parent being to protect my child. Rather, it's to make my child the best person I can. Sometimes that might involve letting them try something and fail, and possibly get hurt... in which case it's my role to make sure they don't take on something which might seriously hurt them. Or punishing them when they've done something wrong.
- DifE-Q 15y ago
  This does not make sense. You are willing to send your child away for more hours per day than you spend with him and place him with adults you don't trust? If you are not going to divest your authority and trust these teachers with it, which you must if you send your child to a public or private school, then you should home school your children. Also, your job as a parent is only to protect your children from things they can not protect themselves against - and to eventually empower/teach/train them to be able to protect themselves. If you hover over them all the time they will, as the article said, end up 25 and still in your house. For instance, if the child got a 79 on an assignment...tough; it was within his power to get an A if he worked hard enough. If he is somehow being targeted by a malicious mean teacher and purposefully given a low grade...tough as well. In reality, it won't affect his chances at a happy and successfully life. Plus, life is not fair and he will meet people like that in real life that he will have to learn to deal with when you are dead and gone. It too is a learning lesson - and nothing you need to protect him against.
Triumvark 15y ago
1. [When I tell a mother something happened, and they ask their child:] "Well, of course it's true. I just told you." 2. "If your child said something happened..." [the parent should acknowledge] "that there are always two sides to every story..." Ok, parents complicate and often undermine education. Still, a little consistency would be nice.
kemayo 15y ago
> above all else, never talk negatively about a teacher in front of your child. If he knows you don't respect her, he won't either, and that will lead to a whole host of new problems. I don't want my child to view their teacher as an authority figure who cannot be questioned and cannot make a mistake. I'm not going to deliberately undermine the teacher, and I'll certainly give full consideration to their arguments, but if I wind up disagreeing with them then I'm not going to pretend that I believe my child was in the wrong just for the sake of maintaining the teacher's authority. > One of my biggest pet peeves is when I tell a mom something her son did and she turns, looks at him and asks, "Is that true?" Well, of course it's true. I just told you. "Is that true?" is a confrontational way of saying it... but what's wrong with getting the other side of the story? I should just assume that you were right? Even assuming that you were telling the truth as you saw it, that doesn't mean you're not wrong.
- wyclif 15y ago
  I don't want my child to view their teacher as an authority figure who cannot be questioned and cannot make a mistake. Erm, I think this rather misses the point completely. The point is not that teachers are perfect and don't make mistakes-- of course they aren't. The point is that teachers used to be invested with vocational authority. In certain Asian cultures, children stand up when the teacher or sensei enters the classroom, and his authority is not questionable by a child. In America especially, the vocation of teacher has been denigrated so much now that they are often viewed as glorified nannies or babysitters. I don't blame young people for avoiding the profession altogether in today's milieu in the West. There are certainly far more remunerative and respectable things to do with your life, which is a shame because teaching the next generation can be very rewarding.
  - tokenadult 15y ago
    In certain Asian cultures, children stand up when the teacher or sensei enters the classroom, and his authority is not questionable by a child. My wife grew up in one of those cultures, and she observes that that cultural attitude allowed a lot of petty tyranny on the part of teachers. She much prefers the attitude in the United States that teachers have to earn their respect. She is a teacher by occupation--a private piano teacher--and she can meet the expectations of demanding clients. I am a teacher also--a teacher of optional group classes in advanced mathematics for young learners--and I would be ashamed to have to insist on respect before I have earned that respect.

62 points by munin 15y ago

A friend of mine is a teacher and the stories are similar. Granted she teaches at a school where she is largely dealing with spoiled rich brats (and by that I mostly mean the parents, to say nothing of the kids). Still I'm not surprised that stories are typical. For their part my parents largely stayed out of my education. I was not a good student but all the teachers said I was a very smart kid. My parents were satisfied with that but always did whatever they could to encourage me to be a better student. In the end though, nothing really changed until I chose to be a better student and work harder. The life lessons of being responsible for my own situation and my own education stuck with me and were good for me. As for teachers heaping all of the blame on defensive parents. I'd suggest they would do good to remember many parents were students once too. They remember just how traumatic school can be (as it often was for me) and how vicious and horrible a teacher can seem when they decide to single out a student for punishment. I can hardly blame some of them for acting defensively. Stop the "poor me" routine and try some empathy instead. My parents were perfectly happy to let me learn my own life lessons, but occasionally a teacher decided to make it their life's mission to "fix" me. Those experiences were usually terrible. In the end the best teachers simply chose to believe in me and looked extra disappointed when I didn't try hard. That was usually punishment enough. Honestly, I'd say the biggest problems with education these days are not the parent, or the teachers but rather are systematic. I think we'd all be better off focusing on that if we wan't it to improve, rather than parents blaming the teachers and vice-versa.

wccrawford 15y ago
The teachers that decide to 'fix' a student would never listen to your advice, and they're the ones that need it. They obviously feel they have a holy mission and no common sense is going to stop them from doing it.

mrbgty 15y ago

Wow, that article is really one sided. Even if I accept the fact that it's all true, the teacher perspective doesn't seem to consider the parents perspective at all. Teachers really don't know the kids as well as the parents do. This isn't the teachers fault, its because they're having to control 20 kids at once. Still, I've noticed as a volunteer many times where children have gotten reprimanded for doing something by one teacher when they were only following directions given by another. Because these children really cannot stand up for themselves, often times they don't know how to respond which can result in a number of different behaviors. The burden of maturity should be falling on the adults (teachers and parents), not the children and yet so often its the children who respond in the most mature way. Yes parents should not be so defensive when discussing their children with teachers, but at the same time those parents SHOULD be the advocate for their child who does not yet know how (or have the power to) to stand up for themselves.

scarmig 15y ago
The teacher-student-parent relationship isn't adversarial. When you say that parents should advocate for the side of the child, you make it seem like it's a sports game or trial. It isn't. Imagine you take your child to the doctor, and the doctor says that your child drinking several milkshakes a day is bad for his health and leading him to obesity. If the parent went on and on making excuses for him--"Billy gets stressed out by school and needs milkshakes to unwind!" we would rightfully mock the parent. But when teachers give feedback about how they've observed Billy picking on other kids, parents require proof that their special snowflake would ever do such a terrible thing and, when proven, start looking for reasons that the other kid brought it on himself. Everyone's on the same side, here. And to be fair, though doctors and teachers are both professionals, the higher status and respect given to doctors is in many ways earned through very hard work. But teachers are professionals too, not ex-convict nanny babysitters who are out to get your kid, and their suggestions and criticisms deserve serious consideration.
- stonemetal 15y ago
  The teacher-student-parent relationship isn't adversarial. How is it not on some level? You get called to come down to the school. Little Billy has been fighting again. You get there the teacher claims your son was bullying Joe. Billy says Joe was bullying him and he was just defending himself and that the teacher was writing on the chalk board with this back turned so he didn't see anything.

peteretep 15y ago

> One of my biggest pet peeves is when I tell a mom something her son did and she turns, looks at him and asks, "Is that true?" Well, of course it's true. I'd almost certainly ask my son that. Seems like a good way to get them talking about the issue, and hear any mitigating factors they might consider. A teacher who took that as a me questioning their authority ... grow up and deal with it.

mavelikara 15y ago
While I agree with many points the article raised, > Well, of course it's true. I just told you. this is a very dangerous attitude for a teacher to have. Aristotle said that men have more teeth than women, but that does not make it so.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  My mother is a teacher, and she has several anecdotes about teachers falling into traps like this. My favorite: Teacher, to parent: "(You need to listen to me.) Who do you think knows your child better? Me, or you!?"
  - mavelikara 15y ago
    I was not advocating taking the child's word over the teacher's. What I found disturbing, as I explained elsewhere in the thread, is the teacher getting upset by the very act of me asking my child's opinion about the incident at hand.
- slmbrhrt 15y ago
  They're not speaking as a teacher, but as a person with integrity, someone who endeavors to tell only the truth, especially in a situation as grave as the discipline of a child under their watch.
  - ZipCordManiac 15y ago
    They are human like the rest of us, good and bad. Do not assume integrity simply because of somebodies profession.

jinushaun 15y ago

Growing up, the "bad" kids were always the ones with parents defending their kids' bad behavior or saying it's false. The "good" kids were the ones with parents who accepted that their kid fucked up. People don't like to be called out on their bad parenting.

sin7 15y ago
Whenever I got in trouble, my father promised to bring hell and the wrath of a thousand demons once he got me home. It made the teachers happy and brought little smirks to their faces. But he made his own decisions and rarely was I punished.

sun123 15y ago

OK. I have seen a bigger problem. The teacher asked for a student's record notes "in a harsh way" and "threatened" to give her low grades. The student eventually committed suicide leaving a suicide note saying "This teacher is responsible for my death". Later the teacher spent days in jail.

gaius 15y ago
Url?

watmough 15y ago

I think there's a move towards home-schooling, at least here in Texas, partly due to the broken-ness of the public school system. Sure, there's some great teachers, but there's also a large number who garner poor results year after year and are never fired. The problems of offensive parents and unruly medicated children are obviously pervasive. The article doesn't even touch on why, with huge unemployment, and massively expensive college costs, children might as well give up hope of using education to attain the standard of living their parents were able to attain.

pnathan 15y ago
College isn't that expensive if you don't go to the big-name schools. Further, being uneducated is a nice way to assure you'll have a hard job life. At least being educated gives you some ability to get ahead.

adamtmca 15y ago

While I'm sympathetic to the struggle teachers have, the line about taking advice from your child's teacher like you'd take advice from your lawyer or doctor really irked me. You can choose your lawyer, choose your doctor, choose your auto mechanic etc. You can take their advice, look for someone different or just seek a second opinion. For parents with children in public school they have no choice who teaches their children.

mtviewdave 15y ago
My parents would always meet with the principal before the school year started, to discuss who would be teaching my sister and me. They even got my sister transferred to a different teacher mid-year at one point, because she couldn't make it work with the teacher she had (I had had the same teacher myself incidentally; it wasn't that the teacher was bad, but that different teachers work better for different students). I can't speak for everywhere, of course, but my parents absolutely had a choice as to who would teach their children.
bradfa 15y ago
Well, if you can't afford private doctors or lawyers, you get what the government provides when you are in dire need of doctor or lawyer services. You're stuck with what the state or other overseeing entity is willing to provide. If you want someone better, you pay for it personally. Get arrested, can't afford your own lawyer, you get one for free provided by the state. You don't get to choose. Get really sick and rushed to the hospital, you get a doctor for free provided by the state or hospital. You don't get to choose. Car breaks, tough shit. State's not going to pay to fix it. Ride the government subsided bus. Lose your job, get welfare and food stamps. Go find another one yourself. Same goes for education. Don't like your kid's teacher or school, go pay for a private school or tutor or home school. That's how everything in life is. If you don't like what's provided by your government for "free," go pay for your own. "Free" as in you are required to pay taxes, it's compulsory. Same way you pay for public defenders for those who can't afford (or don't want) to hire their own lawyers, you will pay for public schools for those who can't afford (or don't want) private ones. Deal with it.
- 15y ago

tomjen3 15y ago

After reading that I can see why he hates parents. Not because the parents are right but above all never talk negatively about the teacher to the child and because I say so it is true shows an entitlement issue on the part of the teacher (bordering on the nacisistic). Respect is earned and if someone is completely unable to get respect when he has to actually answer for what he has done he doesn't dserve the respect in the first place. I have had amazing teachers I have had teachers who were bad and techers who were inbetween. All of them have been wrong on occasion (no surprise, they are human after all) but the only ones I ever lost respect for were does who didn't admit it (or those who blamed their students). Kids are smarter than you think.

DifE-Q 15y ago
If you are a parent are you entitled? -- The answer is Yes. You have certain rights, responsibilities and trust vested in you by society for that child. WHEN you give your child up to the school system, you divest those rights, responsibilities and trust to the school system. And it is true, respect is earned - for people; but not position. I respected very few of my teachers individually. However I respected the office that any one of them held and I gave respect to all of them no matter if I respected them as a person or not. This is both right and wise.

maxharris 15y ago

I grew up in a small town with an "above average" public school: nice buildings, all classes were ~20 students or less, etc. Yet my experience has led me to believe that K-12 didn't matter. I learned to read at home, so they didn't give me that. I was constantly stifled; from my perspective as a child, I saw that my own interests were almost systematically kept out of reach (as an adult, I can see far further as to why and how this situation came to be - but at the time, all I could do is to see their chains and rebel). I was routinely in trouble from sixth grade on up. Remember those end-of-year class trips you went on? They never let me go because I was such trouble! I graduated high school with a D average. The one thing they did do is to set back my educational development by about three or four years. Once I was finally free, I had time to grow unhampered. I discovered that learning was actually the opposite of prison, and that it had everything to do with the things I was interested in. I studied all kinds of things independently, and when I was ready, I took a couple of calculus courses at a community college to prove that I was serious. On that basis, I was able to gain acceptance at a well-respected university, where I majored in molecular biology and graduated with distinction. If proponents of public education really cared about what was best for me, they would have left me alone. My experience shows that a K-12 education wasn't necessary to prepare me for college, or for life. Edit: I'm not saying that no child benefits from their K-12 education - it is clear that some do. But why must it be involuntary? What justifies the laws that compelled my parents to send me to a place they knew (at some level) was hurting me?

scarmig 15y ago
One thing I really like as a developer is that I have the ability to work part-time and from home if I choose to. If I ever have children, I'll definitely do this so I can home school my kid. Public education is efficient at what it does, but not optimal compared to an alternative world that allows all children to have a specially tailored and flexible curriculum.
patio11 15y ago
* What justifies the laws that compelled my parents to send me to a place they knew (at some level) was hurting me?* Benign paternalism which says "X% of students really dislike the experience of attending school. The average case for dropouts is 'totally $&$#ed.' We'll institutionalize them now because it is a darn sight cheaper than institutionalizing them later, permanently."

fuzzylizard 15y ago

The real problem today is that the majority of people view children as accessories. They put them in front of the TV and let other people raise them, i.e., teachers, sitcoms, and the internet. They don't really care about the kids. However, those kids are viewed as an extension of themselves and so any attack on the kids is an attack on them. if you say that the kid has behavioral problems, what the parent hears is that they are a bad parent/person. They don't care about the kid, they care about how it reflects on them. This is the same reason that you have parents beating up and murdering hockey coaches and referees when they pull their kid. In the mind of the parent, the call is against them. We have moved from a society were the entire village raised the kids and parents had the support, training, and coaching they needed. They were raised in an environment in which kids were actually cared for and that was passed onto new parents. Today, we move away from home, most of us don't have contact with parents, grandparents, siblings, etc and we raise kids because they either make us look good or it is simply the expected thing to do. Unfortunately, they don't actually have any understanding of how to raise kids and they are too busy to do a proper job anyway. I am a firm believer that we are getting very close to the day when we will have to issue licences before people are allowed to have kids. Not that we should police who has them, but to ensure that people have the needed support systems and knowledge in place before trying to be parents.

andrewcross 15y ago

My aunt is a teacher and these examples are bang on. However the one thing the article doesn't touch on are how terrified teachers are to make any physical contact with students, regardless of the situation. All it takes is one parent to accuse them of sexual harassment and their careers are forever tainted. Not saying all contact is fair game, but a teacher putting their arm around a child who has been hurt should not be damaging to their career. The power balance is entirely out of whack.

joshAg 15y ago

"One of my biggest pet peeves is when I tell a mom something her son did and she turns, looks at him and asks, 'Is that true?' Well, of course it's true. I just told you. And please don't ask whether a classmate can confirm what happened or whether another teacher might have been present. It only demeans teachers and weakens the partnership between teacher and parent." "If your child said something happened in the classroom that concerns you, ask to meet with the teacher and approach the situation by saying, 'I wanted to let you know something my child said took place in your class, because I know that children can exaggerate and that there are always two sides to every story. I was hoping you could shed some light for me.'" It infuriates me that the author implies that only kids can exaggerate, bend the truth, or lie. Apparently there's more than one side to every story only when the first side isn't the teacher's.

phugoid 15y ago

My son had his very first day of school today, and this article irks me. Everyone who works for a living could write a similar article about how great it would be to have unbounded trust, power and authority to carry out one's job. But that's not the way it works. My job as a parent is to protect my kids. At all costs. Riling the feathers of a self-important teacher is of no concern. This is my blood that we're talking about.

dhyasama 15y ago
I'm a father and yesterday was my daughter's first day of school. I don't think my job is to protect her at all costs. My job is to prepare her to be a healthy, happy, and responsible adult. Protecting her is part of that, but so is letting her fall down so she can learn to get back up. Also, she will never learn personal responsibility if I defend her at all times regardless of fault. Sometimes she is the one in the wrong and she needs to learn from that.
kemayo 15y ago
I don't think you should blindly defend your children, though. Be predisposed to defend them, sure, but be open to the possibility that they were in the wrong and have a lesson to learn from it. I wouldn't view my job as a parent being to protect my child. Rather, it's to make my child the best person I can. Sometimes that might involve letting them try something and fail, and possibly get hurt... in which case it's my role to make sure they don't take on something which might seriously hurt them. Or punishing them when they've done something wrong.
DifE-Q 15y ago
This does not make sense. You are willing to send your child away for more hours per day than you spend with him and place him with adults you don't trust? If you are not going to divest your authority and trust these teachers with it, which you must if you send your child to a public or private school, then you should home school your children. Also, your job as a parent is only to protect your children from things they can not protect themselves against - and to eventually empower/teach/train them to be able to protect themselves. If you hover over them all the time they will, as the article said, end up 25 and still in your house. For instance, if the child got a 79 on an assignment...tough; it was within his power to get an A if he worked hard enough. If he is somehow being targeted by a malicious mean teacher and purposefully given a low grade...tough as well. In reality, it won't affect his chances at a happy and successfully life. Plus, life is not fair and he will meet people like that in real life that he will have to learn to deal with when you are dead and gone. It too is a learning lesson - and nothing you need to protect him against.

Triumvark 15y ago

1. [When I tell a mother something happened, and they ask their child:] "Well, of course it's true. I just told you." 2. "If your child said something happened..." [the parent should acknowledge] "that there are always two sides to every story..." Ok, parents complicate and often undermine education. Still, a little consistency would be nice.

kemayo 15y ago

> above all else, never talk negatively about a teacher in front of your child. If he knows you don't respect her, he won't either, and that will lead to a whole host of new problems. I don't want my child to view their teacher as an authority figure who cannot be questioned and cannot make a mistake. I'm not going to deliberately undermine the teacher, and I'll certainly give full consideration to their arguments, but if I wind up disagreeing with them then I'm not going to pretend that I believe my child was in the wrong just for the sake of maintaining the teacher's authority. > One of my biggest pet peeves is when I tell a mom something her son did and she turns, looks at him and asks, "Is that true?" Well, of course it's true. I just told you. "Is that true?" is a confrontational way of saying it... but what's wrong with getting the other side of the story? I should just assume that you were right? Even assuming that you were telling the truth as you saw it, that doesn't mean you're not wrong.

wyclif 15y ago
I don't want my child to view their teacher as an authority figure who cannot be questioned and cannot make a mistake. Erm, I think this rather misses the point completely. The point is not that teachers are perfect and don't make mistakes-- of course they aren't. The point is that teachers used to be invested with vocational authority. In certain Asian cultures, children stand up when the teacher or sensei enters the classroom, and his authority is not questionable by a child. In America especially, the vocation of teacher has been denigrated so much now that they are often viewed as glorified nannies or babysitters. I don't blame young people for avoiding the profession altogether in today's milieu in the West. There are certainly far more remunerative and respectable things to do with your life, which is a shame because teaching the next generation can be very rewarding.
- tokenadult 15y ago
  In certain Asian cultures, children stand up when the teacher or sensei enters the classroom, and his authority is not questionable by a child. My wife grew up in one of those cultures, and she observes that that cultural attitude allowed a lot of petty tyranny on the part of teachers. She much prefers the attitude in the United States that teachers have to earn their respect. She is a teacher by occupation--a private piano teacher--and she can meet the expectations of demanding clients. I am a teacher also--a teacher of optional group classes in advanced mathematics for young learners--and I would be ashamed to have to insist on respect before I have earned that respect.