I was in my fourth year of teaching. I had a difficult Year 9 English class (they seem to get more difficult every year.) A few strong personalities (some of whom were later expelled) managed to subdue the quieter ones into complete submission, including a perpetually vacant looking girl called Catherine, who never spoke unless spoken to and even then she sometimes didn’t. Asking her to speak in front of her peers was all but impossible, and gentle prodding was all her teachers could do until she grew a little bit older and perhaps a little bit more confident. Just like me at her age.

Her father lived in a different city. I’d not met her mother either; she didn’t come into school even for parent teacher interviews. I taught Catherine English. She never produced work of outstanding nature, but then it was a group of students who struggled somewhat with the basics of reading and writing. My job was to take them to the library, foster an enjoyment in reading (good luck to me – by the age of 13 most of them already hated it) and teach them how to do research. They chose their own topics and I let them. Celebrities, sports people and fashion ruled the research topics, but the research skills needed to find out about these things are the same, so why not be led by their natural motivation to find out about the frivolous?

Then her form teacher came to me one day with a letter. The letter was from Catherine’s father. The form teacher was much older than me and said, “You’re young. So you probably haven’t seen one of these, but I’ve seen a few in my time. I just need you to read this load of rubbish and sign here to say you’ve acknowledged it.” (I don’t know when you stop being a ‘young teacher’ – if I worked in IT I would have been one of the older ones…) I noticed with interest that all of her other teachers had already signed.

The letter was long winded and badly worded, but went something like this:

After spending the recent holidays with my daughter I’m shocked and disgusted at the state of the education system in New Zealand. What are we taxpayers doing, employing you teachers? My daughter knows nothing of English history, nor does she know the first thing about any of our classical myths and legends. She doesn’t know any Greek Gods, for instance. I would like all of her teachers to be made aware that my daughter is missing out in the education system. I’d appreciate it if this letter could be passed around and signed by all of her teachers. I expect to see an improvement in her rounded education in future.

I should mention that this school is one of the best performing schools in the country.

I couldn’t quite believe it. Here was an absent father telling his daughter’s teachers what to teach when he obviously had little idea about the curriculum we were required to cover. I saw this girl (among a class of 30 others) for 4 hours a week. I’ve always thought that a lot of parents abdicate responsibility for their own children’s education after their own kids reach school age – and many more have done this by the time their children reach the uncommunicative teenage years and move on to high school. I’ve heard countless number of people complain about what a poor job teachers are doing. It’s in the news at the moment… again. Apparently so few people are choosing teaching that teachers’ colleges are lowering the grades required to get in. According to some people’s logic, this means that only society’s rejects will be attracted to the profession.

Just the other day, a local resident apologised to me that I might overhear swearing coming from his sons, but the teachers at the high school ‘don’t do anything about it’. I raise my eyebrows at this because I happen to live near enough to this person to know that it’s not from school that his sons get their language. How can he know that the teachers don’t do anything about it? I’ve noticed that teenagers are quite capable of modifying their behaviour on a situation by situation basis. I’ve even seen this happen as the same group of students is taught by different teachers. Teenagers behave differently again in the home environment.

On a similar topic, if parents think that certain knowledge is vitally important to the rounded education of their children (eg Greek Gods for 13 year olds) what’s stopping them teaching their children these things at home, in the vastly greater number of hours shared in the evenings and weekends? If a father wants more of a hand in his daughter’s education, perhaps he should consider the effect his own broken family is having on his daughter, rather than blaming the rest of the world for any perceived lack on her part.

There are many opinions about what knowledge is important and what’s not. But opinions are like assholes. Everyone’s got one. And everyone’s got an opinion on teachers because everyone’s been to school. This qualifies many as lay-experts, even if they haven’t actually set foot in a school since the day they left themselves.

Today’s school age children won’t need to have memorised poems and prayers. They aren’t made to reacall the capital city of each major country and the Kings and Queens of England. They need to know how to learn, how to find things out for themselves and discard the knowledge that isn’t important. Teachers know that. Teachers have had this drummed into them by the committees whose drafted and re-drafted curricula have shaped what teachers do in the classroom today. With or without help from parents.