"which is sad because the thread has given lots of personal evidence from women who have clearly not had these teachers but fairly crap (or simply bog standard) ones"
Sorry - but I don't except that the critical comments on here about teachers are clear 'proof' of their poor teaching. I get loads of really positive feedback from my classes, but every now and then I get negative feedback from someone who doesn't like my approach. If one person in a class of 12 is very unhappy with their class and dislikes me, does this make me a crap teacher who needs retraining? This happened to me recently when one woman got really angry during a class when I was talking about the issue of midwive's 'fobbing off' women who want epidurals (- ie, do you think fobbing off happens? how do you feel about it?) in relation to women requesting an epidural during late first stage labour, when the labour is progressing normally.
This mum comes from a country where many women have epidurals on request as soon as they go into labour. She said, angrily 'Why on earth would any midwife want to stop you having an epidural'? I opened the discussion up - it didn't help that the rest of the group was very anti-epidural and a lot of comments were made about the possible impact of epidural anaesthesia on the physiology of birth. I talked about how there's a preoccupation in midwifery as a profession in the UK right now with increasing rates of normal birth, and some midwives may feel that in fobbing some women off who want an epidural they're helping that person to have an uncomplicated birth. I made it very clear that this wasn't something I was supportive of, and we talked about where the buck stops when it comes to pain relief (we did reach an consensus that it always stops with the mother - it's her choice alone). We then went on to talk about what you could do to avoid the chance of this happening to you (in relation to birth plans and communicating with the midwife about pain relief). Anyway, this woman kept coming back to the issue of midwives stopping women having epidurals, as though she had switched off somewhere quite early in the discussion - gesticulating and raising her voice, talking about how her sister had had an epidural and that she'd had a perfectly normal birth etc etc. At the end of the class she just dashed off - and didn't attend the rest of the course, or come to the reunion. I emailed her twice asking if she was ok and said I was sorry if the class had upset her, but didn't get any response. And that was that.
I was really upset about it, and thought about it a lot afterwards. I wonder if anyone had asked her she'd have said that the classes were too focused on natural childbirth and that I was 'anti-epidural'.
I've also had very negative feedback from a client about a breastfeeding class (not taught by me). They came into my class the week after their bf class and said they were shocked by how 'anti-formula' the NCT was. The were positively bristling about it. Well I know what this bfc says about formula in her sessions because I've observed her teaching on a number of occasions. She spends about 15 minutes of a two hour class talking about the pros and cons of breastfeeding - during which time she refers to the risks of formula feeding, as all bf counsellors do in their teaching. Like many people, this couple had been planning on mixed feeding from early on, and this was the first time they had heard this information. They were shocked and angry. The rest of the 2 hour class would have been devoted to talking about attitudes to breastfeeding, finding out how bf works, and learning about positioning and latch. If bf had gone wrong for this couple the likelyhood I wonder if this is how they would have reported the class: "It was sh*te - the teacher went on and on about how evil formula was, and then made out that bf is really easy and natural. She didn't talk about all the things that can go wrong..... bloody NCT bf nazis" yada yada yada.
You get the picture?
People have 'issues'. Lots and lots of issues around birth and breastfeeding. And very disappointed and angry feelings about how they were cared for and how their births went. Teachers might not always be great, or even good, but they often cop a load of flack for things they really aren't responsible for and have no control over. There's been some serious character assasination going on on this thread, with teachers accused of not just stupidity, but seriously irresponisible and cruel behaviour towards parents. And they've had no chance to defend themselves. The thing that's really upset me is that these criticisms are seen as being rooted in the basic ethos of the NCT - an ethos which from where I'm standing is actually all about empowering mothers and supporthing their rights to decent care. How come no one ever does that with midwives or any other health professionals? Takes an perceived failure in practice of an individual, and uses that to cast aspersions on the values of the entire RCM?