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

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.