As I pointed out here, there seems to be a side of teachers to believe that they are of more importance to a child’s well being and success than their parents. Yes, I know about how some parents are doing the best they could (according to teachers) to help their kids through school and the like; I get that. Having run a daycare center, I saw it first hand and gently shook my head at some parents. But that was a minority, a real small minority of parents.
Sidenote: Sometimes, parents give up trying to help. I’ll admit – I’m not a math major as I only got through multi-variate calculus and I do computers instead of my major, biology (where I concentrated on energy transfers within sub-cellular mechanisms). I figured that SURE, I can help my kids with their math and science homework. But I’ll tell you, all I ever got was “THAT’s not how my teacher teaches me!”. And when I finally figured out the cockamamie way it was being done, I finally learned why Johnnie and Janie can’t read and make change in the 7-11; I admit, I stopped trying to “help” my kids – it caused more problems than it solved. It brought back memories of trying to teach a Education student what Y=MX+b was.
But I would never, not even in my wildest dreams of megalomania or delusions of being “Emperor for the World for a Week”, would presuppose to believe that I was better for their kids than they were – my staff were paid to watch over and teach age appropriate lessons. Never did I think that we were that important to believe that we should or could supplant parents.
Unfortunately, like the teachers in that post, there are others that need to relearn that lesson – like these words uttered by teachers in Moultonborough, NH back in October, whose words were similar to that of the WI teachers:
…students are WAY ahead of the times, way ahead of parents on multiple issues especially when it comes to openness and sexuality…I disagree with having parent being allowed in. I think that students are willing to talk about this because they have different views than their parents…a huge disservice to the community and the school.
And I wonder why they have different views…as another teacher admitted (also speaking against letting parents into that workshop:
We are educating them to be tolerant…this is just another difference we are educating them about….but you might offend somebody
This School Board meeting came about because of an annual program that the Moultonboro School system runs called Project Safeguard. During that day’s events, a homosexual advocacy group called SAGE from Plymouth State had been invited in to talk about being gay in school – and it was to be during a workshop that was to be closed to parents (who generally have other workshops they can attend either with other parents or mixed in with students).
Where they are safe to talk without other peoples beliefs [meaning the parents] (unintelligible) because they may believe different….more accepting than their parents…your kids are doing and saying and seeing and reading and hearing and watching thing you have no clue about every day. Don’t take this out on a program that is being offered for your children.
Key phrase?
They [SAGE] promoting an environment of acceptance.
Yet, there were some parents in the crowd that were rather displeased that this workshop had been almost “sprung” on them, and spoke against the teachers as you can see in this clip:
And one brave lady put it out there and on the line – and summed it up completely:
…the other is parent rights and what I am hearing from the teachers who have spoken is a little bit of contemptuousness for the parents rights. And I think this is something that the School Board and the School needs to address this because the parents have the right to be there. And they don’t seem to understand that.
My take on this is that there is a bullying goes on in schools. That said, the word “acceptance” can have multiple meanings. Many parents believe that there is not enough instruction in the traditional reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic going on – what we pay the teachers for with rather mixed results. Instead, we do see a molding of attitudes and outlooks by teachers and the curriculum that does lend credence when the teachers say there are cultural differences between students and their parents. One is here, in my opinion, that teachers are teaching an attitude to their charges that their parents, by their own words, are to be ignored as they are the ones that are out of touch.
Once again, I ask “who work for who”?
