Is there generally less support from parents towards schools and teachers these days?

[sandyballs]

If so, why? Just wondering after listening to a couple of friends over the weekend who are intelligent, sensible people but I found their attitude quite surprising.

One of them has a DD at primary school who is aggressive and often lashes out, she's 10. She came home on Friday with a note from the teacher asking her to write a letter over the weekend, apologising to a girl who she shoved in the classroom. Fair enough I think, my DD said everyone who is caught pushing or shoving gets the same treatment. This girls mum was outraged, said she would tell her DD not to write it, the teacher should have got her to do it at school as it infringes on the parents weekend etc etc.

Another friend, again nice people, who I have always thought were sensible level headed types. They have a 12 year old boy at secondary who is occasionally put into seclusion at school for bad behaviour. They were telling me this in front of the boy, saying how out of order it was, how he wasn't a naughty boy, just misunderstood and the head of year was a mini hitler who didn't like their son ....... etc etc. You get the gist.

I've been thinking about this a lot, I have two girls who start secondary in September and I just can't imagine slagging off the school and the teacher's decisions so blatantly in front of them. It's almost giving them permission to do exactly what they please at school without sanction, knowing that mummy and daddy will side with them whatever.

I know there are some instances that are unfair and there are some crap teachers around, like in any other job, and that is different but there seems to be a general lack of backing up what the teachers have said and what they are trying to achieve. Surely if they've done wrong then yes, write that letter, sort yourself out in seclusion, do the detention and parents should be behind them 100% unless in exceptional circumstances.

Difficult to generalise as each parent and each school have different approaches to discipline.

I would say though that both schools and parents have different views on discipline than 30 years ago, think of the use of the cane and general attitudes towards smacking for example. I think discipline in general is not as forceful as it used to be all round.

True, it is very diff now. Still doesn't explain parents attitudes though, I'm just reading one on another thread!

How on earth are these children going to learn how to behave properly when they don't even have a decent role model to follow?

Yes, I think there is. You only need to read any one of a dozen threads on here any day of the week to see it. My best friend finishes her teaching craeer tomorrow (last day of term here) - she's changing direction after 20 years of primary teaching purely because she can't put up with aggressive parents who think their child can do no wrong any more. She says that they don' do homesowrk because their parents say they don't need to, the same ones come in late every day and answer back and disrupt the rest, but no matter how often their parents are called to the school, nothing changes. It's very sda.

sad

DD is in year 7 and one of the girls in her class has had several detentions and one isolation in her first year at school. DD now has to sit with her in some lessons and she hates it because this girl will not stop talking. Why do some children not know how to show a bit of respect towards the teacher?

This is a difficult one.I am going to be somewhat hypocritical. I agree with the parent who does not want this letter interfering with her weekend. The child should have been directed to write the letter at school - in break or lunchtime and should have lost privileges as a result.

However, I do not think the child in question is correct and I do think her parents should discipline her themselves and make it clear they support the school. They should not side with her as you put it.

Personally I do think the parents need to sort their child out before she gets any older. Teachers cannot substitute for poor parenting If my DS were to come home having done something like that he would certainly know of my disapproval and there would be further sanctions at home over those at school. I doubt he would do it again. Mind you without being smug I dont think he would be out of line like that anyway. I think (hope) I have made sure he knows how to behave.

Most of the people who I know are supportive of the schools their children are at.

Some people are natural pessimists and will see the negative side to a lottery win.

I'm a secondary school teacher. I think parents on the whole at my very middle class school are supportive (although some ineffectually so). Some don't give a toss about school, but it is the ones who are outrageously unsupportive in that they make bizarre complaints or actively undermine the school's position in front of their children who tend to stick in the mind.

The strident 'my kid is never in the wrong' types also put me off from seeking the support of parents in case I'm setting myself up for a lashing.

Otoh far more support is expected of parents these days. Which makes the gap seem all the wider.

I don't think our parents' generations were expected to keep up with every change in teaching methods or have that kind of close involvement in the homework or even spend as much time reading with them. I am quite sure my MIL never did any of those things- and the school never complained. These days we are expected to turn in projects for 4yos which presuppose a high amount of parental involvement, because they are designed so no 4yo can do them on their own.

There was also more tolerance of family circumstances in some ways. We have had the same medical condition in the family for at least 4 generations. When my grandmother was badly affected in the late 1800s, she just spend a few months out of school staying with relatives on a farm; the school just accepted that of course the child's health needed looking after. When dd had similar problems, the HT reported us to SS, because of the attendance statistics.

Bullying and fighting in the playground were far more accepted and there were fewer expectations on both school and parents to do anything about it.

I do have a different attitude to school compared to my parents. My parents were very much of the view that whatever the school said or did was right. Any challenge from me whether on theoretical or practical grounds was dismissed out of hand.

We will discuss school matters with the DCs. We dont automatically assume that whatever the school says/does is right.

This does not mean that we are constantly going back to the school to complain if a classroom punishment has affected one of the DCs. Instead we will explain that sometimes they have to just live with these things.

We have made very clear to our DCs that as they are generally well behaved that they are in fact vulnerable to being made an example of. We have explained to DCs how this works. Yes, we are cynical and we have shared that with the DCs but I would far rather that than the blind faith & obedience my parents had.

Just going on what I have experienced, friends say and what I read on MN, in the papers, it seems to me that many parents tend not to have much confidence in schools/the education their dc receive and are often not happy with the social behaviour in schools which has deteriorated beyond the occasional bullying behaviour and cliques I remember from my schools.

From teachers who seemingly cannot spell well to violent dc, uncertainty about levels, requirements, teaching time being taken up with videos, to over-expensive trips, parents have enough genuine cause to worry and to question things IMO.

Yes, I'd say so. When I was teaching I was staggered at the accusations from parents that teachers were lying if they had to contact home due to a child being disruptive in class and swearing at the teacher concerned. I didn't last long teaching secondary

I did consider teaching secondary at one point but I spent some time in a school to see first-hand what it is like and tbh I thought the disciplinary side of it, just managing the class would wear me out, never mind the teaching. This was a very middle-class school with high entrance requirements so full on academic and highly involved parents with clear academic goals for the dc. You would think that would be an easy place to teach but is one thing to teach and quite another to deal with classroom management. A teacher I met who works in a school in the north of England which has a large contingent of dc whose parents are immigrants from the same country really shocked me with tales of what her working life is like, the kind of insults they are subjected to on a daily basis. Frankly all female teachers are openly referred to as bitches etc. She told me the parents were polite and supportive of teaching staff but she really hated the job. And this is not the toughest teaching environment in the country.

I chose not to move into teaching, people who do it and stick with it must be very hardy types or quite altruistic.

I agree with Cory that much more is also expected of parents. Certainly in the past I can't imagine young primary age children being given homework that they had no chance of completing without substantial parental input - yet that is the norm now.

Also, I think there have always been parents who didn't back up the school. And, of course, some teachers who don't deserve backing up. I remember one memorable occasion, (after I'd left primary so I didn't see it first hand), when a father came into assembly, walked up to the headmaster, and thumped him. I think it speaks volumes that although of course the news was all over the village in seconds I don't recall a single person who didn't (a) think it was funny, and (b) think the headmaster had it coming. 30+ years later of course I think the father was wrong to hit the headmaster but I can still see why the latter didn't get much sympathy.

Parents have much higher expectations of themselves nowadays, which especially includes being their child's own major advocate. Therefore the default position for many is to fight their child's battles & not to have their children fend for themselves. Parents expect to be involved & to be held personally responsible (giving them more investment in outcomes).

On top of that, we are told to expect more from all services, especially education. We're encouraged to whistle blow object complain etc.

I have been thinking this lately. There is so much parental interference I wouldn't want to be a teacher.

Everything the school does is questioned, and they have to justify to parents what they are doing.

DS2's school had to close yesterday because it was flooded. Obviously the children had to be paired up with who was picking them up and it was very stressful. Cue much tutting and moaning from parents rolling up, not able to pick up their little darling immediately. The poor teachers were trying to tick the children off as they left.

I have been known to send the odd e-mail with a query but nothing more.

My favourite 'unsupportive' parent was the mother I phoned to tell that her son had been sent home because he'd called a teacher a 'twat'. She asked which teacher it was, I told her and she said "Well she is a twat isn't she?"

Many times I've phoned parents to say that their child has been rude,bullying and bone idle to get the reply "I know, he's like that at home. I can't do a thing with him." I always want to say 'Yes,yes you can" and reel off a list of suitable punishments for the child.

corlan that's exactly what I'm talking about, not only do the kids not respect the teachers, neither do the parents.

It is VERY annoying when you witness Little Johnny deliberately kicking another child, reprimand him according to the behaviour policy, and then have to deal with an irate mother who asserts his innocence.
There are lots of Little Johnnys and Josephines out there pulling their mummies' and daddies' heart strings!

tbh I am probably less critical of teachers than my parents were - but that's because they were teachers and had very high standards (and little patience with colleagues who did not live up to them)

I feel I have been very supportive to my kids school and teachers - not just my opinion - the school and individual teachers have thanked me for it in the past.

Unfortunately it hasn't led to improved behaviour at school. As such I've moved from being pro-school to rather cynical about the efficacy of discipline policies and how much being "supportive" helps change behaviour rather than just makes everyone feel like we're "doing" something.

My take on this now is:

• some kids don't like school and school doesn't like them. school being - organised into groups by age, learning by being told not by doing, plus the whole fevered environment around education now, the primacy of league tables swiftly negated by complaints of "dumbing down" and so on.
• a lot of the behaviour that school doesn't like is acceptable in workplaces, speaking up, eating at your desk, getting up and walking about, so I don't agree with those who say "how will they able to behave in the workplace if they can't at school?" Happily most workplaces are populated by a range of ages and experiences, and can provide a better example of behaviour to emulate than a year 8 class can (banking aside of course ).
• being supportive, in my experience, has led to the continued application of ineffectual sanctions that satisfy a written discipline policy. I'd much rather support some old skool hard ba**d approach whereby teachers could assert their authority themselves within the lessons. I've heard that children can't learn if they're afraid (fair enough), but equally they're not learning in internal exclusions with a worksheet.

I'm not blaming teachers - I'm blaming the stupid arrangements we've got ourselves into around education as a whole, which is highly unlikely to be in anyway improved by anything Michael Gove has planned. Thankfully not much longer before this stage is over chez nous!

There are good reasons why you can't have kids randomly getting up and walking around in classrooms, eating at their desk and talking whenever they like. Nothing to do with learning how to behave in the workplace either.

NobleGiraffe - Agree, I'd much rather this wasn't happening too. But it is, and I've found that being supportive isn't necessarily effective in changing behaviour for the good. Although who's to say it wouldn't have been worse if I hadn't been?

I don't mean to have a go at teachers. I am aware they're under a lot of scrutiny and pressure. It would be great if parental support wasn't met with gasps of disbelief / relief, and likewise parental questioning wasn't taken as "criticism" but just a conversation between adults to find an effective solution.