Teachers and parents - "them" v "us"

[MeerkatsUnite]

Hi

Was reading this article in the Daily Telegraph at the weekend and if anyone else has read this I was wondering what you thought:-

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/main.jhtml?xml=/education/2005/12/31/edrents31.xml&sSheet=/education/2006/01/19/ixteleft.html

My initial reaction was how on earth did it come to this?.

Small wonder therefore that schools cannot deal with bullying.

I thought there was a real them and us at mainstream. Trying to do the best for ds1 (and the school) was very difficult as they were so defensive. Always Mrs this etc which was ridiculous when we had to work so closely together. I was always the last to know if something was going pearshaped.

Special school is completely different, christian names all round, lots of discussion about the way to do things, massive attempt to coordinate between home and school, questions answered honestly.

I particularly disliked the greedy bitch at the end, carping about the presents that she was bought with such a distasteful sense of entitlement.

but surely you wouldn't read an article by india knight, say and think that what she has to say is honestly and comprehensively inidicative of ALL mothers of three; or divorced parents; or ST columnists or size 18 women - would you?!!

to say 'when did it all come to this' is to assume that this is the attitude / experience of all teachers, which is clearly a nonsense. This is an article about teachers having a moan about parnets so it's hardly going to provide a balanced viewpoint. Yes, some of the moans ring a bit true but only SOMETIMES and only with SOME INSTANCES. It's exaggerated for effect. and it encourages aggression and offence which isn't very helpful, but please don't judge all teachers by this little article. speak as you find by all means, but don't use this piece as your benchmark

link

Here's the link.

Not a particularly helpful article, was it? Most teachers don't see parents as the enemy, at least most of the time. There's too much them and us going on in this field, and I don't see how it's in anyone's interests, least of all our children's.

I also don't see what's wrong with writing letters. People write letters when a face to face conversation is getting them nowhere, or when a ftf conv is inappropriate. And letters, of course, demand a response. So if a parent is writing letters, rather than a teacher automatically thinking it must be because the parent is a nutter (although in a tiny minority of cases, that may be true), perhaps they should reflect on why the parent has felt it necessary to put their concerns in writing.

The Times Educational Supplement website is one of the scariest places on earth.

My experience with my children's schools has always been pretty positive from the point of view of being treated as an equal. However, my sister is the deputy head of a large state primary and she has some hair-curling tales to tell, of parents who, when called in to deal with their child's aggressive behaviour, have physically assaulted the teacher for daring to suggest their child is anything but perfect, etc.

As with most things, there are good and bad parents. When asked for complaints about parents, you are hardly going to get a teacher writing in saying "on the whole parents are wonderful, but there's this one mother ....". They are going to get all their gripes off their chest and thus the whole article is skewed from the outset.

And I agree that the teacher's gripes about presents is distasteful in the extreme.