This week, Time reports that teachers have the toughest time managing their . . . students' parents. Teachers frequently complain of overbearing parents who "undermine the education and growth of their children." For example, one sixth-grade teacher told a student that she must work on her reading at home, only to have the girl's angry mother complain that the teacher had "emotionally upset her child." Another elementary school teacher complains that she can no longer make objective comments about her students without parents intervening, like some who demand that their kids never be reprimanded or even corrected. "We handle children a lot more delicately," she says. "We've given them this cotton-candy sense of self with no basis in reality." Many parents will demand tough, rigorous standards - until those standards are applied to their own kids. Some have even sued schools that have attempted to expel the little dears for cheating, blaming teachers who "left the exams out on a desk and made them too easy to steal." Unfortunately, the reporter gives time to zealots like Alfie Kohn, who blames all this mayhem on, you guessed it, standardized testing. Despite such madness, the article illumines a real problem: the tendency of some parents to demand high standards and strong disciplinary measures for everybody but my child.
"Parents behaving badly," by Nancy Gibbs, Time, February 21, 2005 (subscription required)