A familiar phrase to many teachers these days is, "My mum'll sue you". We live in a culture of blame-and-compensation, and personally I blame the USA and all those Ally McBeale shows. That's a joke by the way. Well, to an extent.
The view towards teachers has shifted. The last generation with wholescale respect for
authority figures has grown up, whilst the children currently punching each other in my
school's corridors tend to be the spawn of parents whose main hobbies seem to be watching
Jerry Springer and expecting something for nothing. They don't support school policies
but instead rankle against them, siding with their mega-brats every time. As detentions can now
be disputed, the naughtiest kids wriggle out of their punishments by brandishing a note
from somebody at home (mum, dad's latest girlfriend, step-gran, etc.).
Having met some of these parents, I imagine they were frequent detention-attenders themselves. You know that some parents like to live out their unfulfilled ambitions through their kids? We tend to picture the pushy parents sending their little angels to ballet classes and tennis lessons, but there's also a flip-side to this - the nasty pieces of work who now exact revenge on the teaching profession in rememberance of canings past.
added 24/7/03
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