Why are teachers still referred to as Mr/Mrs/Miss X?

[ChimaeraEgg]

Idle musing of the day but why do children still have to address teachers using their surnames? I assume that originally this was a respect thing and due to the fact that it was normal to address people at work or other adults as Mr/Mrs X? But I'm 32 and never in my adult life have I addressed another adult using their surname. School is the only place I have done it.

No thanks in school I want to be miss personal not first name. I do think it is a respect thing and more formal.

Also helps with parents not looking you up on Facebook etc!

I call parents Mrs x, or x's mum never by their first name. They aren't by friends or people I know.

You know that feeling when you’ve hear a child whining ‘mom!’ For the millionth time today. Try doing that with your own name all day long and hundreds of teenagers. Also, kids in the class will have the same name so you’ll have to be Miss/Mrs/Mr Chimaera instead of just Chimaera anyway, at which point the kids always drop the Chimaera so it may as well have been Sir or Mrs or Miss Egg anyway.

Also, respect. I am en English teacher and often teach students to analyse terms of address in a text as the indicate relationship and social status. Personally I am very glad I am not called by first name at work unless it’s by my colleagues.

Yeah the mum thing is very annoying ,my child has complex disabilities ,and I get this a lot with professional,s particularly I'm meetings ,,it everybody gets a dressed as Dr blah,blah,nurse blah ,blah ,teacher blah blah and I get and this is mum ,what does mum think ,🙄not even my child's name mum just mum

In my DS's primary school they call the teachers and even the headmaster by their first names.

It freaked me out the first time my 5 year old casually said "Hey, Adam" to his principal . Wouldn't have happened in my day.

Teachers, like any other law-abiding adults who are making a contribution to society, are worthy of respect from children.

I'm Mrs Smiles at work and when I call parents then I always call them Mr/Mrs/Miss Surname. I tend to sign off my emails with Lola Smiles, but then I tend to only go onto first names with parents who I have a lot of involvement with.

I really hate it when I'm at DC's medical appointments and am called Mum. Either call me Mrs Smiles or Lola, not Child's Mum or Mum.

I am very happy to have boundaries in place @DishedUp. If you call your clinical senior Dr, Mr, Ms, etc, may I respectfully suggest you begin to address your patients or their parents with the same level of respect. I do not understand why a highly educated person would think anything else appropriate.

My accountant, lawyer, etc, and I are on first name terms. There seems only to be an issue in hospitals/NHS and I believe it is to do with a patriarchal culture.

It's about equality at the end of the day and every stakeholder involved in a person's car should be afforded equal standards of respect.

Vis a vis my children, I found the more we paid, the more friendly relationships were.

I think it is better to create a professional boundary between people.

DD's school is quite formal and I appreciate it, it shows teachers are not your friends or aquaintance, they are there to teach you.

In my home country most people at work are addressed formally, Mrs/Mr X unless you start a form of friendship. I would never just come and call a person I don't know very well by their first name. Even the parents of my school friends where always Mr/Mrs.

I prefer being address by my titel and surname if I don't know the person I am talking to well, that includes bank staff, medical staff, even the vet calls me Ms. These are not my friends, I don't have a. relationship outside the service they provide.

I’m in my forties working in a professional role and approached senior contact on email (law firm). He was pissed I hadn’t addressed him by Mr X. I was mortified BUT I also think him hugely over playing the ‘I’m more senior’ card and I’m also male. Made me feel uncomfortable and tbh pretty awful. We’re both pretty senior and I’ve never been scolded like that. It reeks of a power play in a professional environment. I have a more important job therefore I am more worthy.
Bloody awful. I would never ask someone less senior to call me Ms Delamero.
Teacher in school slightly different but even then it feels a bit odd as an adult.

@RosesAndHellebores I guess it’s because I’m in school a lot usually and the children all call me by my forename - I introduced myself as such as it was easier as many know me by my forename outside of school. The teacher ends her emails with her title and name, so I address her as such, whereas I end them with my forename and she addresses me as such.

Old habits and a lot of ideas on how social divisions should be enforced in language. With a lot of my friends that work in hospitality jobs, they professionally have their first names visible (and with my spouse and a few others I know, they're not allowed to give their surname to customers), but I guess everyone is allowed to get familiar with them...

My DS1's teachers are all on a first name basis. It hasn't made his teachers less professional nor is he overly familiar with them or with his leaders at cadets who also always use first names even when getting them to march around in uniform. In the case of the same name (which would happen for them even if they went by surname), they'll add on job role rather than title, but only when needing to separate the two.

My DDs teachers are all [title] [surname], and even after 3 years of DD1 attending, some still call me Mrs. when I always sign off emails with my full name with no title and in their computer system we had to sign up to that requires a title, I'm Ms. In fact, this caused an issue when doing virtual parents evening because they'd input more than a few of us with the wrong title (or only put in one parent when the parents evening thing allowed two parents to be put in) so when we tried to sign up, we got errors that parents were unrecognized. Now they're learning all the first names anyways through Teams...

I do work involving the Trust the school is in so I get some emails from the school in the name I introduce myself with when it comes to my being seen as a professional (which I would think of as basic respect) and when I'm seen as a parent, I get emails with a mangle of titles depending on who is emailing.

I do find Sir and Miss/Madam (both of which have connotations that don't line up well with Sir) awkward in schools and really annoying when I have to remind my DDs to use names as I can't know which teacher they're quoting at me when they use Sir or Miss.

We call all our patients Mrs, Mr etc unless we are told otherwise or know them extremely well.

I expect to be called Mrs W. In banks, or whatever

Dd is a teacher and where is the respect is she is called by her first name. (She is only 5 years older than some of her students).

I really hate it (at work) when people call up and introduce themselves as Mrs smith here. What's your first name? It's not 1925

Never had an issue with teachers PaperMonster in the context of names and titles. Sometimes speak to grown-ups as though they are 8

It’s respectful. A child in a class of pupils is not, for want of a better word, ‘worthy’ of first name terms with a teacher. First name terms implies familiarity and mutual position. A child is nowhere near mutual position! The same applies for friends’ parents in childhood...they are Mr and Mrs X.

In a workplace, there should be mutual respect and equality - not of roles, as such, but of worthiness - so first names are fine.

I agree it's about professional boundaries. I don't think children should call their teachers by their first name.

I call my accountant Mr x and the GP Dr. I also give short shrift to anyone who doesn't know me (particularly on the phone) who addresses me as Anne.

My DC went to a school where teachers were known by their first name. When it was introduced teachers could choose whether to be called Mr X / Mrs X and as the HT was going by his first name others followed.
They've recently dropped first names for teachers and I've drilled into DD she is NEVER to say Sir/Miss.

I would be horrified to hear my kids call a teacher by their name. They are Miss/Mr/Mrs. I was brought to call them that and my kids too. Its respectful.

However, i call my GP by her 1st name as we were in school together and she’s a distant neighbour.

In my (non UK) school the children use our first names. My sisters (UK) school, they do also.

Respect isn't addressing someone by their surname or referring to a hierarchy. It's about much more that that, IMO.

I would be horrified to hear my kids call a teacher by their name.

That would horrify you?

Respect isn't addressing someone by their surname or referring to a hierarchy. It's about much more that that, IMO.

^exactly that. The brits love hierarchy though!

@ChimaeraEgg

I spent four years working at a university and frequently interacted with professors. We never called them professor X and neither did they refer to themselves that way - not in normal day to day interactions with colleagues.

Because children don’t understand professional boundaries as adults do, so the formal titles are a reminder.

People keep explaining this to you, stop being obtuse.

@notanotherlockdownsurely

IMO it's power thing with teachers. I've worked in Education, Health and Social Care. The only professionals who will still insist that they are addressed in this way are teachers. Social workers don't do it, neither do doctors and nurses. I have also heard teachers address parents as 'Mum'..... So why do teachers do it? I work within professional boundaries daily. I have no need for anyone to address me as anything but my first name. is it insecurity I wonder?

How weird. Just two days ago I was asked to give feedback on a professionals CIN meeting conducted by social services that I'd attended (I'm a retired teacher now working for an organisation in a voluntary capacity). I complained that the social worker referred to (and addressed) the pregnant woman I'm supporting as 'mum' throughout the entire 2 hour meeting. I asked that in future she addressed this woman by her name, as I'd found the use of 'mum' impersonal and patronising. So (some) social workers most definitely DO do this.

No teacher I have ever met has done this.

It is about respect. When I worked in a shop as a teenager many years ago we had to call colleagues Miss, Mrs or Mr Whatever in front of customers and we accepted it. We also used this form for older or more senior staff. We were much more formal then. There's nothing wrong with showing respect.

I’m a school governor and some of my children’s teachers are also neighbours. As a governor, and socially, we call each other by our first names. When we talk to each other as parent and teacher, we use Mrs/Mr X. It’s a handy way of reminding ourselves which context we’re in and keeping clear boundaries.

Its disrespectful to call the their first name. They're ate your kids teachers, not a friend.