Parents to blame for problems in UK schools

[Amey]

Any opinions on this article in the Observer. Mumsnet's Justine Roberts gets a name check and makes some sensible comments.

Personally, I think it tough to expect kids to be fully socialised and ready to learn at 4 years old!!

Having read the article I think it does make a valid point. However, I am not sure how serious the problem really is as none of my friends seem to have problems with their children at school. I have a feeling the problem is, to a certain extent, a socio-economic one. In addition, whilst I believe the parents do have an important role to play in socialising their child, it is also the job of the teacher to discipline in the classroom and since teachers are unable to do this effectively (in that they are unable to even touch / restrain a child who is misbehaving) it is also contributing the problem.

I'm a teacher so obviously I'm going to side with the posters who say that poor behaviour is down to bad parenting.

Dunno if anyone else has said it but my theory is that the problem with today's (crap) parents (obviously not any of us...) is that they are Thatcher's generation. Today's 30-somethings grew up in a society that blamed teachers and demeaned the work they do and also encouraged people to be selfish and to look out for number one ("there's no such thing as society...")

Therefore many people lost respect for teachers (and other professionals) and, as a result, now think that it's OK to barge into a school and threaten staff or behave abusively in their doctor's surgery (you never used to see signs at the doc's about what will happen as a result of threatening behaviour, did you?)

Although I work in a very "challenging" secondary school in what has been described as a "sink estate", I have only once had to deal with an aggressive parent and then it wasn't physical, just him haranguing me about his daughter's crap grades. We work VERY hard in my school to keep our parents on side and informed.

As for unsocialised 4 yos, my mum has been a primary school teacher for nearly 40 years and says that she has 5 year olds who are picked up at the school gates, given a dummy and wheeled home in a pushchair!

Ali teachers do restrain kids, ours have training in SN restraint.

I don't think its socio economic:I see it far more here, in this 'nice' area than ever at home where people had a bit of respect for teahcers (a very poor area). There's almost a 'I could have done that job but chose not to, you must be a sucker' attitude going on with some parents I know

Recommended reading for all parents and teachers.

Charles J Sykes "50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School".

Here is just a sample:

Rule#1. Life is not fair - get used to it.
Rule#7. If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss.
Rule#9. Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn't.
Rule#14. (for the girls) Looking like a slut does not empower you.
Rule#19. It's not your parents' fault. If you screw up you are responsible.
Rule#21. You're offended? So what? No really. So what?

feralgirl - I agree some of this is not new. For my last two years at primary school (some 30yrs ago...) I used to be "server" on the reception table at lunchtime along with the reception teacher (lucky me...) This was in the days when kids started at the beginning of the term in which they turned 5, not at only just 4 as some kids do now. Every time new kids started you could guarantee that at least two of them had never had a knife in their hands before and could only use a spoon & fork or at worst just a spoon. Two weeks of cold lunches for me & the teacher while we taught them how to eat properly...

I look back now and it was basically slave labour wasn't it, expecting another kid to do that?

Love it, Lucia!

same here Lucia

in the 1940s post war my mother taught classes of 40+ in poor Catholic schools in the NE. One of the things she taught her 5 or 6 year olds was how to blow their noses, things like that. A lot of them had not been taught basic things at home. I am not sure things are any different now than then in lots of homes.

What I had always tried to teach my five is that you will often get a teacher you don't like or who doesn't like you or who is unfair and that's great - means you're learning how to deal with difficult people and trying to understand the teacher's marriage is probably breaking up or she's going through the menopause or may be she or he's just a miserable so and so and that's a great lesson to learn for life and of course also that we support the school in its decisions eveni f sometimes we think it's wrong because that's better .

What Xenia!!! Teach your kids that teachers can be unfair - OMG - i have (almost) never been so insulted in my life - why do we bother doing this job??? The reason we do this job is because we like kids - if you stop liking kids you have to get out of the job or you will go mad...talk about undermining the role of the teacher - you are equating teachers to stroppy kids

I heard an interesting thing this morning on the radio - a word i have never used in my teaching career "OBEDIENCE"...what a concept!

Stillenacht: are you saying that no teacher has ever done wrong? That they are all perfect in every way? Get real - they are human, like the rest of us.

i think you misread me. Most of the time teachers are very fair. I'm very supportive of teachers. It's just sometimes they aren't. I've had five children over 20 y ears in at least 8 private schools and occasionally you get one who no one likes much or doesn't like your child. It's just how it is. Teachers are people. TYhey have good and bad days and some are lovely and some you don't really want to go near with a barge pole but that doesn't matter. Children have to learn to deal with difficult other pupils and difficult teachers too.

oh of course teachers are human - of course they make mistakes but thats life - people (kids and parents) have to suck it up - nowadays you simply don't have the teachers of the past, the teachers that you used to beat kids to get their jollies - i haven't met one in 15 years of teaching... the endless bullshit and excuses we have to put up with and the PC way in which we have to reprot on kids - only putting positive statements and re wording things if they are deemed too harsh or, wait for it - my most loathed word, inappropriate- we are indeed a downtrodden lot

I think that education should be a privilege to be earned.
Make it compulsory to go to primary to get the basic skills (literacy and numeracy) but secondary should only be available to those who have mastered the basics (why try to teach them French when they are still struggling with English?) and want to be there. Not everyone is academic so why do we pretend that they are? Why force them into an unsuitable one-size-fits-all situation?
If education was a privilege instead of a right then it would be valued more. It's not parents nor teachers who are to blame - it is the system.

report

I do agree to a certain extent with the article but think Justine's points about working together are excellent - however, it is always only going to be the interested parents, therefore the good ones - who take part in such.
In my experience the problem is mainly socio-economic. I have worked in a wide variety of schools, from a sink estate in inner city Birmingham to a posh (state) school in North Oxford. In the latter we had interested, supportive (and often pushy) parents, and not too many behaviour problems, and generally a lot of respect and the children came in able to socialise in this way. Unfortunately, in the inner city school, the average attendance on parents evening was 3 parents out of 30. I saw stuff there that will always haunt me, one occasion I had to take a little boy home becuase no one turned up to collect him, I got to his flat and his stepdad answered, high on drugs, said 'couldn't you keep the little shit?' and told me he was going to set his fucking dog on me if I didn't leave now. The flat was a hellhole and stunk to high heaven, the poor child. SS were involved. Another child, 5 yr old, changed into someone else's torusers after PE (easily done) and his mum asked me reasonably to find them, I sent a letter out to all parents, searched high and low etc, couldn't locate them, then a couple of days later was loading my car when his dad approached me with an iron bar and told me he was going to kick my fucking brains out because I should have made sure he had his own trousers. I was incredibly shaken and managed to get in and go with him banging the car. So sad that this can happen, but it does, all over the place.
I'm not sure it's a lot worse now than 10 or 20 yrs ago, but it does seem that some parents care less and less and have less and less respect, and that's passed to their children, sadly. ;(

I teach my son that what his teacher says, goes - end of.

madairy - i have also had similar experiences, waiting for parents who don't show, seeing kids in their uniforms at weekends because they have no other clothes, having to be protected at parents evening by male staff...

TheMightyBoosh - teachers don't have restraint training - that's The Police - they have training in positive handling. I have an up to date qualification in one form of it due to having taught in an EBD school all last year. Now I'm back in a mainstream school, it's quite useful. When children say "You can't touch me..." I can reply that, in certain circumstances, I may.

It has helped me de escalate fraught situations in corridors, playgrounds etc, because I have the confidence to get in closer physical proximity than most other staff.

It seems to me that there is a lot more of respect left for teachers thane for parents. Or perhaps this was always the case. I am trying to read the posts changing (teachers by parents and viceversa). I mean, I cannot imagine so many posts blaming teachers on every child's problem. Still children, mainly the smallest ones, spend more time with teachers than with parents.

Obviously I do not mean that teachers and parents have the same roles. However, I cannotg see how blaming parents will help on this one at all (or blaming teachers). Lots of empathy missing here.

Grr wrote a post and my internet connection went.

I have restraint training, I insisted on it after I needed to restrain a child who was charging towards me with some scissors. She was either going to injure herself or me. The student then sat in the corner of my room and got her friend to punch her repeatedly before announcing to the class that I had asaulted her. I was taken off timetabel while the whole thing was investigated. I went home that night after being warned by my union that police could turn up at my door that night, I may be suspended and my name in the paper. The girl admitted she was lying and was excluded for 3 days.

As Xenia says teachers are not perfect, I sometimes snap when I am overtired or stressed. It does kids no harm to learn how to navigate social relationships and realise that people are not robots set exclusively to perfect citizen and martyr mode. If I am in the wrong I always apologise and the kids respect that.

Message withdrawn

Peachy pure ADHD isn't in the same league as ASD, you'll be glad to know! I teach lots of ADHDers who are happy, if hyper, little enthusiasts, who don't keep still or shut up but don't have the social defecits that our ASD kids have.

I know I'm putting the bright side but really, really, if you can cope with ASD (and you've not mentioned any major issues with ds2) then you should be fine with ADHD (and at least there's a tablet for ADHD which does help, unlike autism, if things ever do get bad.)

I think ADHD is a much less complicated bag, but I'm still sad for you that you have yet one more thing to have to think about. xxx

everyone blaming everyone else again - so I'll join in .

The more I come into contact with the education system the less I respect some teachers. They have the children for more hours of the waking hours of the day than the parents and yet are constantly blaming the parents. Some parents, OTOH, expect miracles when their brat has never had any discipline at home. There are bad parents and bad teachers.

Seems to me that our education system is pretty rubbish - still firmly based in the past. We insist on requiring children to learn things that they don't see as relevant to their future and are sometimes presented in an extremely boring way. But we also try to teach them to think for themselves. The result is that they do think - and think school is a waste of time.

In our school magazine this term were articles from 2 former pupils. Each said they no longer remember much of what they learnt - and I wonder how much each of us remember? For me it is very little. It was important that I learnt to read, write, add up and analyse a problem but not all the facts that were drummed into me. From the mouth of the teacher to the pen of the student without passing through the brains of either ......

We need a revolution in education not tinkering around the edges.