New Athenian Academy

I have a love/hate relationship with parents, and the scary things is that I am a parent.   How do teachers deal with parents and then how do parents deal with teachers?   It seems we have arrived at an impasse in the relationship.

Let’s start with parents…. What is our job in the education process?  Do we get involved? Do we let our kids sink or swim on their own? I have conflicting ideas of the role of parents.  As a parent, my instinct is to say that I want to be involved.  I want to know what and how my kids are doing in class.  However, my kids are starting to get old.  At some point they need to survive on their own.  Then what is my role?  Do I just sit back and let them take care of everything? Part of me hates giving up control.

On the other side of the coin, what do teachers want of parents?  (Author’s bias: I taught primarily high schoolers, so that’s who I base my ideas off of)  Parents should be limited in their involvement in day to day school business.  I have a great resentment to the so-called helicopter parents.  Do they trust teachers?  My opinion: no, they don’t.

At some point we, as a nation, need to let go.  We have to give over trust to the experts.  All the editorials and education plans I’ve read in the past year in some part blame teachers for problems.  Supposedly we have too many bad teachers.  If that’s the case, fine, get rid of the bad teachers.  But even if they did that and got “good” teachers into positions, parents who still not give over control and trust to them.  We, as a nation, are too used to the Burger King philosophy “Have it your way.”  Not everything can be personalized.  Education is in some respects generalized.  We need a standard, all students need to learn certain things, then we can get more personalized.  But that’s the kind of Burger King philosophy parents adhere to.  They don’t want what’s best for their child, but what they think they want.  It’s like ordering a Whopper with extra cheese, mayo, and extra meat… not what you should really be eating but what you want at the time.  Will that burger help you 30 years from now when you develop heart disease?  No it won’t, but we cannot deny ourselves.  It works the same way in education.  At some point we need to let go of control.

Teachers need to focus on teaching and parents need to focus on parenting at home, teaching their kids values, behavior, manners, and loving them.  Leave the reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithematic to teachers.

And don’t even get me started on nonexistent parents…

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Education Problems by Tobe