When I was growing up I used to listen to stories my grandpop would tell me of his youth. "I used to walk to school up hill both ways, in the snow, barefoot..." "When I was in school the nuns used to keep us in line with anything they could get their hands on and throw at us!" While some of the stories he used to tell me were highly over exaggerated, some of them were truer than I could even imagine. The teachers in his day were the absolute. What they say went, and the parents were behind them no matter what. I remember a story of a teacher throwing an eraser at my grandpop and when he told his mother that he did not actually do anything she said "well think of it as punishment for something you did not get caught for!"
Even when I was in grade school, if I got into trouble my parents were convinced I deserved whatever was coming to me. With the readings we have been doing as of late I am worried that I am not going to have any support that I am used to seeing and hearing about. I am by no means saying that we should go back to the days of throwing things at our students. I am not a person who thinks that physical punishment solves anything, but I would like to see the support that the teachers received from that time. I am wondering why over the years the amount of power the teachers had is decreasing and the blame is increasing? Were we, as students brought up to think that teachers are always in the right, now rebelling through our own kids? Do we need more control now because we did not have any when we were in school? Where did all the support go?
That’s a good question. It does seem that teachers have less respect and often parents are more likely to blame the teacher for situations that their child is unhappy about. I have personally witnessed this many times. I am a member of a book club – about seven women, and our common bond is that we all have boys the same age (now high school seniors). We often talk about issues that occur at school and with our kids and many times I hear about bad teachers. Once in particular one of the moms was complaining about the terrible Spanish teacher (who both my boys say is the absolute best!—even though she is very tough).
ReplyDeleteI don’t know why we have seen this shift but we need to quit trying to place blame and instead try to figure out how we can support everyone …teachers, students, and parents.
I think one of the main problems is communication these days. I feel like we are more a society of talkers, and instead of listening to each other, we are just waiting until it is our turn to talk next. We are too impatient to think clearly sometimes and I think the teachers are getting the short end of the stick on all sides.
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