[When] asked to choose the most important activities for parents to be involved in, helping young children read and helping with homework ranked low, selected by only 14% and 7% of teachers respectively. Only 5% of teachers believe the most important role for parents is being active in such school-related activities as field trips.
The survey found gender differences: Male teachers are more likely to emphasize that parents spend time teaching young children to read (19% of men versus 11% of women), while female teachers are more likely to expect parents to be involved in a disciplinary role (37% of women versus 31% of men).
Conrad Winn, president of COMPAS, said this may reflect general differences between male and female parenting styles. "Often times, mothers think the fathers are wimps when it comes to disciplining the children. There seems to be a gender pattern."
Doug Wilson, registrar of the college, said discipline has become an issue for teachers in some schools where parents have requested their children be moved from special-needs classes into mainstream classes. The result has been that those teachers face a greater challenge dealing with students with a variety of needs, including some with behavioural problems.
Public school teachers have also often complained about overcrowded classrooms and, according to the survey, appear to expect parents to do their part ensuring students are not being disruptive in their busy classrooms.
My Commentary:
For too long, the worst behaved have been able to disrupt the classes and the teacher, if not blamed, is not trusted to take action based on that teacher’s pedagogical experience and common sense. School administrators have bent over backward to accommodate and NOT punish disruptive students. The chickens have come home to roost. Discipline is obviously a major problem. Kick out disruptive students based on the word of the one who has to run the classroom!
Teachers have been cowed by the blame-everything-but-the-child zeitgeist and the current child-centered theories, and by weak administrators who, in turn, have been cowed by the prevailing laxity and aggressive others—whatever their role. Take the word of the adults in charge of the classes. Stop listening to and catering to whinging kids and their parents. Get some guts! It has to stop so that those who want to work, can work. Kick out the bad actors; be firm and never relax your grip.
Teachers, stick together; get some guts, yourselves!. Call a spade a spade and stop making excuses for a**holes who ruin it for everyone else. So what if his or her tender pink feelings are hurt. His/her actions are probably not your fault -- but if you let the a**holes get away with it, it is your fault. Talk to other teachers. No-one should have to put up with what I hear goes on in schools today. Demand that other teachers and your union support you. Get a life! And allow your real students to learn!
Teachers’ unions, where are you on this issue? Support the ones who pay you, your membership. No education takes place in a rowdy classroom. Money is not the only issue in teaching -- nor is class size -- nor whether schools have adequate professional development days, the latest word in modern buildings, the latest buzz-word laden curricula, or adequate school supplies including and especially computers. The bottom line is that schools need books, paper or pen, and teachers who are able to teach in an atmosphere conducive to learning -- teachers who are not utterly cowed by the need to address every social, physical, and psychological ill that a child may be heir to -– along with trying to handle the just plain a**holes who make the day sheer H*** for all. Address this first!
