Unions

 

Being Presumptuous

We’re teachers.

We studied to be teachers and we learned pedagogy at a place of learning where we were taught how to teach children/young adults*

What we didn’t study was how to be a parent. 

Of course, there are very few university courses that deal with how to be a parent although  perhaps there should  be.  That’s a debate for another day.

Our job as teachers is to accept the students that enter our classrooms (real or virtual) and then we teach them.  We can teach them many different things like how ionic bonding works; how to draw an apple; what 6 times 9 is; the devastating effects of war; how to not sit in a circle, pick your nose and show it to the 5 year old next to you; what a teddy bear’s picnic looks like; how water gets recycled and the whole myriad of other stuff that children should learn about in a school.

This is what we do.  And, by and large, we’re very good at it.  We learn to take into account the huge variety of different students that we have, some of whom have very different needs from each other and some of whom have very different needs from what is called “normal”, a term that has  never really defined properly.

We are very good at taking a disparate group and moulding them into good learners and good people as far as we are able given that we are not their parents.

Because, and this does frustrate some of us, we are not their parents.

Their parents are their parents.

So it is with dismay that I read of a particularly odious member of the teaching profession, Ms Birbalsingh, pontificating in the British press on what constitutes good parenting.  It has to be said that her nasty piece just happened to coincide with what was to be the latest in my stunningly mediocre blogs and so perhaps I should thank her for reminding me to write it.

We’re not parents.  The study of pedagogy does not give us the right to dictate to parents on how to be parents.  Experience of teaching does not give us the right to dictate to parents on how to be parents.  To think otherwise is the very height of hubris, of presumptuousness and of pomposity and of arrogance.

Sure there are basics that we can talk to parents about.  Get your kid to read regularly.  Don’t let your kid spend all night on their computer or tv.  Feed your kid well.  There are lots of other pieces of advice we can give but they’re all pretty generic and self-evident  e.g. Don’t let your kid eat concrete.  You don’t need to be a teacher to tell a parent that.

And, sure, there are more specific pieces of advice we can give to parents such as which specific books to read; what kind of tutoring would benefit them the most; what kind of passing drills will improve their football skills the most or which particular BBC Bitesize site is the best (clue: they’re all good).  These things are good pieces of advice to adults who may not already have an idea about.

But to tell a parent how to bring up a child?  My God, how arrogant!  How condescending!  How wrong on so many levels!

Yes, we as teachers wish that all parents could be brilliant parents but, guess what, all parents are human.  They make mistakes.  They have different views on parenting.  They have different ideas on what direction their children should be taking in life.  And yes, we all wish we could stop parents making life-changing mistakes – the most obvious being to allow their child to experience Marmite.  Or supporting Arsenal (Or, God  forbid, Man Utd) or telling them that Reggaton is good music to listen to.  Or, a particularly heinous act, telling them that pineapple on a pizza is somehow not an offence  against all decency. 

But we can’t.  We can’t interfere in how parents choose to be parents.  Just the same as when we think parents are presumptuous to tell us how to teach, just think how parents feel when we tell them how to do their life chore/unbelievably rewarding experience. 

We’re teachers. 

Let us be teachers.  Let us embrace it and the challenges that go with it instead of trying to dictate to the parents of our students how we think they should go about their business.  If we do that then it will be reciprocated by parents. 

 

*I’ve always been confused by this term and annoyed by it.  The LEA I worked at many years ago classed anyone over 15 as a young adult.  Now, bear with me on this.  Adulthood lasts, legally, from 18 until you die which is on average in Europe about 70 odd.  So a young adult should surely be anyone who is from 18 until about 30, right?  Because you’ll get a young adult then they will change to into a middle age adult or mid-life adult and then into an old adult.  So this idea that you can call a kid of 16 who isn’t legally an adult enough to vote a “young” adult seems to me to be absolute nonsense .