Freshman, Part 5: If You’re a Parent, It Probably is Your Fault. (Intro)
For as much damage as stupid teachers do, their numbers are still remarkably low. In fact, ever single day, tens of thousands of brilliant minds walk into classrooms all around the world and require of their students a level of thought and behavior unmatched by society at large; so a few idiots in the bag is, at the very least, to be expected.
Stupid parents, on the other had, appear to be a dime a dozen. And they are, it seems, growing in number every day. Of course, such things stand to reason because stupid parents are only, after all, just bigger versions of stupid kids. Stupid kids become, without intervention, stupid parents; it’s that simple. And they, in turn, give birth to (more than likely) more stupid children.
Now to be clear, by “stupid” I do not mean simply “not smart.” Sure, kids can be that too, but that is not the kind of stupid I’m talking about. By “stupid” I mean something quite a bit closer to “ignorant”. In fact, it is more like a conglomeration of ignorance, selfishness, pettiness, arrogance, vanity, pride; all the makings of the perfect human stupid storm. And, as a teacher, I have found that one gets to deal with this sort of thing on a regular basis. There are phone calls, open houses, notes from home, emails, voicemails, meetings with the principal; this list goes on. And then, of course, there is the parent-teacher conference: 30 tortuous minutes that has the potential to last for days, and quite often feels like an endless fall from a burning building.
iAmRiedel said,
July 29, 2010 @ 9:51 pmNPR? You’ll have to send me the link. As for the rest: well said. Agreed. Period.
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Sunrise said,
July 29, 2010 @ 5:10 pm“Stupid parents are only, after all, just bigger versions of stupid kids. Stupid kids become, without intervention, stupid parents; it’s that simple.”
It is that simple. Also, quite painful.
I am writing a piece for NPR about all the things that are [still] not okay to say out loud. For instance, we [educators] can’t tell parents that their children set very low standards and then fail to meet those standards. I get queasy when I see children, barely sporting new teeth, eating Cheetos and soda for breakfast though they already have cavities. Why isn’t it PC to yell at someone who is abusing their child!?
Further, parents (and everyone) are puzzled by standardized tests. If you do not even speak in complete sentences to your child how can you wonder why he/she reads at a 2nd grade level in high school? Uggh, I can’t go on.
A few moments in a salon where a 2 year old is getting a mani/pedicure… a kid throwing a tantrum for candy in a supermarket… a subway station where kids play tag… to people who take pictures of themselves harassing homeless people…. all of this makes a solitary life climbing mountains in Tibet so desirable!!