I work in schools from time to time (not a teacher) and I get to go to many, in many different areas. Most schools are not like the one in adolescence, but some are and some are even worse in my experience. I have worked in schools where no learning happens at all because the whole school day is taken up with behaviour management and they really are like a holding pen. Pupils who would do well and behave, are lost in a class of disruption, and everyone leaves those schools with no qualifications and a sense of no hope. One particular school I worked in, was so bad that it was difficult to even get through the door. Pupils fighting, swearing, violence, running away, attacking teachers..there was a constant police presence and they had a huge team of behaviour/pastoral staff but it made no difference. Parents didn’t care and staff had given up. Really sad for pupils who wanted to learn and had no option to move.
I do agree slightly with the point a pp made about some rules being for the sake of it and quite pointless, causing a disconnect between pupils, parents and staff. At my child’s school, which is very good, every day head of years go round each class doing uniform checks and equipment checks, making every pupil empty pencil cases. If someone forgets a ruler, it’s an hour detention after school. My own child was wearing plain black boots to school when it snowed, she was told that the next day she must wear the correct shoes. That would be fine, but the rules mean that the options are black boys full shoes or those little dolly shoe things. She walks an hour to school every day. In the end she continued wearing boots and no one mentioned it again. I think I would have contacted the school in that situation. Teachers might then see me as one of those parents.
Luckily my own dc have never had a negative point or detention and we are told they are always polite and well behaved. I do teach them that we must respect teachers and follow the rules. I work on the basis that my children need resilience and the ability to thrive in the big wide world as adults and that includes not being entitled shits with no ability to respect others or adhere to rules.
I think most parents are like me in that way, but some, especially in the schools described above, are as you say. I don’t know why, I don’t know what flicked the switch but it does appear that they do not respect the rules themselves and think the schools are bullying their child who can do no wrong.
I remember having a conversation with a teacher in my child’s school about how we cannot always rescue them from anything they may find uncomfortable or upsetting and we must teach them their actions (or inaction) has consequences. One of my DDs is forgetful due to adhd, when she was little I would forever be back and forth to the school dropping off forgotten items, to prevent her any distress or missing out. As she grew up I stopped doing that, if she forgot something then she got detention and that was that. How else would she learn, I wasn’t up for packing her bags when she got to 20 !!
I am on lots of parent class message groups, it’s constant on there, parents complaining that their little angels are being singled out by teachers, with no acknowledgment that their behaviour caused the situation. It often becomes a witch hunt, people planning to complain on mass. One particular parent has 6 children who are apparently being bullied by teachers…who just don’t like them..but fails to acknowledge that having 6 badly behaved dc is not purely coincidence. She laughed when telling me her dc had physically hit the head of year.