“Miss” and “Sir” in schools

[MyCleverGrayBear]

Been to lots of secondary school open days recently. At the state secondaries the children showing parents around etc called the teachers “Sir” and “Miss”. Is that normal? I haven’t heard this IRL ever.

(To be clear, “Miss, this parent wants to know about languages at school” vs “Mrs Jones, this parent would like to see the sports centre”. But also in a couple of classrooms there were children constantly saying “Miss, look at this, Miss, I’ve out the sign up, Miss, shall I stand here” etc and it was incredibly grating.)

And why are female teachers “Miss” and make teachers “Sir”? I felt like I was in a bad 80’s Grange Hill episode and Benny Hill was about to run in and chase me 🫣

What is it with this series of batshit crazy threads about schools? With people behaving like they are aliens over perfectly normal things such as addressing teachers as sir and miss (done in every school I’ve attended or worked in for the last 40 years) or their kid having a 1 minute time out.
I genuinely don’t get how these people have made it to adulthood with such bizarre ideas.
with this thread I can only assume that the only experience she has is private prep or similar.

I don’t think a kid has ever given it a second thought.

Isn't that kind of the problem with everyday sexism though? The lack of thought anyone applies to it even as they use and perpetuate it?

Much more likely than not to be Sir/Miss in private, unless its one of these new age progressive outfits.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom well, I disagree they're unequal personally. But my point is that both the usage and the intent is equal and balanced. Someone observing from the outside might find the choice of title to be jarring or negative but that's not the experience, usage or intent within the school setting. I think that's an important point to make.

As a teacher I can assure you that this is pretty low (not even on mine) on the list of problems we have at work or things we find challenging about dealing with teenagers.

There's no readily acceptable alternative though.

I am a feminist but being called Miss (politely) is not the hill I'm going to die on.

Me too, but I quite intend getting emails that begin Dear Mrs. That's just weird.

I also get Hello Mrs.

And heey missss.

Quite often...

On an Open Day, it probably is. They're probably running around dealing with lots of teachers many of whom they don't know.

Total non-issue imo, miss or sir has been used in all the schools I've learned and taught in. It confers a level of respect and I actually like that they are applied equally to staff in school regardless of status or rank. A colleague could have PhD, post-oc, whatever and still be sir/miss. There's enough hierarchy in schools without also addressing teachers according to rank or qualification!

Do people really think that changing school culture to get children to refer to female teachers as 'Ma'am", "Madam", or to use first names for everyone, or some other system would have some kind of measurable impact on levels of sexism in society?

Yes normal for UK.Did you go to school out of the UK?

Do you want them to be called Sir and Madam? I don't think that would work, somehow. Maybe Ms?

A friend was at a girls boarding school at Malvern and called her teachers Ma'am.

Kids call teachers Sir and Miss, it doesn’t go any deeper than that. I can testify for myself having once been a school kid who used those terms that it meant nothing at all. I wouldn’t have liked or respected a teacher anymore because I called her Madam instead of Miss or lesser of a male teacher calling him Mr Jones instead of Sir. They were just names to get their attention or acknowledge their presence, nothing more nothing less.

Must be tiring being some people.

Just as calling a male teacher "Sir" does not mean he is a knight of the realm, calling a female teacher "Miss" does not imply that she is a young girl. Words can have more than one meeting.

The honorific "Miss" is a contraction of mistress, the feminine form of master, and this is how it is used in schools. It is a term of respect - and is both offered, and received as such.

This is completely normal in British state secondaries.

Completely the norm. Doesn’t bother me in the slightest, in fact it’s a blessing because it means I don’t have to remember the names of all staff members. We have 250+ adults on site and when you are starting it’s impossible to know everyone. Plus it saves time; life moves fast in schools and often communication happens in corridors between classes and whilst dealing with several different situations. ‘Thanks Miss’ is easier than ‘Thank you Mrs Smith’.

I get the whole ‘Miss’ being thought of as less but I really don’t want Ma’am which is what my son’s school do. The kids really don’t see any difference and they usually do know the name of their class teachers.

I'm in Scotland this was the norm when I was a pupil in secondary and now as a teacher

It may have been the norm at the schools you taught at but neither DH not I had it at our secondary schools (both state).

It’s normal, but I prefer the Hogwarts approach of calling all teachers “professor”, regardless of sex or qualification level.

Not only has this been going on forever in many schools, the 'surprise' from some people that people actually do this even made it into a TV programme (possibly that was even Grange Hill) many many decades go. I think in that case it was private school kids in the programme saying "wow, they really do say miss" or something like that when they met some state school kids.

I went to a private school and it did surprise me when I first realised it's common in some schools, just because it was novel and unfamiliar to me. I can't see anything wrong with it at all though - it makes it possible to be respectful in some way even if you don't know a teacher's name.

What I dislike though is one teacher talking about another teacher like that - "Ask Sir..." "MIss is going to...". I can't see any excuse for not using the other person's name in that situation - it just feels lazy. Fine to use it as a respectful way of addressing a person directly, but not to talk about them.

I see lots of statements that this is normal in then'UK' or 'British' schools.

I'm in Scotland and I've never come across this.

Any other Scots had the same experience?

Is this just a thing in Englandshire.

I went to secondary in the 2000s and it was totally normal then (I remember my mum thinking it was strange as well!)

worked in a secondary from 2015-2018 and it was the norm then too.

I've never felt disrespected as a 'Miss' compared to my 'Sir' colleagues. I suppose the more formal alternatives (like 'Maam') just don't sound right, especially in our accent lol