"Stop teaching my kid?" Stop whining!

March 10, 2004

The Irascible Professor has a recent guest commentary by a teacher, which was picked up by Joanne Jacobs and Number 2 Pencil, so we figured we'd chime in. The turgid piece, "Stop Teaching My Kid" has to be the worst abuse of superlatives and absolutes that we've ever seen in our entire lives. (Well, maybe not that bad.)

The pseudonymous Elise Vogler writes:

The vast majority of Americans would be shocked to learn of one potent force that keeps the quality of public education low. Budget problems, you ask? No. I'm talking about parents.

We just love it when public school folks blame parents for their woes. Parents make such handy whipping boys (and girls)! We've often mentioned our desire for increased options for parental choice, such as vouchers, charter schools, and deregulated homeschooling--for the simple reason that parents (when given the power to choose) make a potent force.

But here we learn that parents make for a potent force to keep quality down. Very interesting, here we thought the culprit was collectivist unions and progressive educators, with dumbed-down curriculum and self-esteem puffery. We apologize for the confusion.

In complaining about the progenitors of her students, she writes:

All these parents want is that which is safe and comfortable for their children. This includes a curriculum where there are no real expectations of the students.

Sounds pretty dire. Surely she's only talking about the parents who happen to have jobs in government, right? No, she insists that "most parents want an easy pass" but we at first suspected that she meant to say some parents. We were proven wrong.

She then expended a great deal of prose on a lazy student named "Mark" who is a decent reader, but wanted an easier course than the one taught by Ms. Vogler. Stop right there! A student who's both capable and lazy? Who'da thunk it?

As luck would have it, this student also has an enabling parent, backing up the student's request to transfer to an easier course, and willing to take the complaint all the way to His Holiness the Pope if necessary. Now this is just too incredible: a capable but lazy student who also happens to have an enabler as a parent? Gee, what are the chances?

She completely glosses over the truly remarkable aspect of her story: the part where her administrators backed her up despite this parent threatening to go to the school board of the entire state!

No, she draws the completely wrong conclusion:

What's frightening, though, is that in my experience, Mark's father is the norm, not the exception. I have had dozens of such incidents over the years.

Dozens! Ok, let's have some fun. Let's assume Ms. Vogler, English Teacher, who admits to have been teaching for over ten years, teaches only 5 courses a year (we're being conservative and assuming they're full year courses). Assuming dozens means about 25, and that she's got a class size of 25 (another conservative estimate), let's do the math:

25 complaints divided by ten years, divided by 5 periods, divided by 25 students per class, gives us a whopping 2% complaint rate. Here we thought that "norm" meant that something was in the clear majority. In any given class of Ms. Vogler's, apparently that is a majority of one-half-of-one-student.

Next she recounts a painful description of the lengths to which she's gone to make her course easier (and supposedly easier to pass), including practically handing out an answer key during each exam, yet still large numbers of students fail.

We're surprised that a teacher with over a decade of experience has never heard of the universal maxim: "Lower your standards at your own peril." In school terms, this means that if you lower your expectations, your students will exceed them. In the wrong direction.

Has she never considered that by dumbing-down her own course, she's telegraphed a very clear message that she doesn't expect very much from her charges? And this becomes a deadly self-fulfilling prophesy. Good thing parents are waiting in the wings to take the fall, because she claims it's all their fault!

We have a few suggestions for Ms. Vogler:

• Grow a spine and/or thicker skin.
• Realize that most folks are silent until they have a complaint.
• Take a course in basic Statistics. This might help you understand that the self-selected group of complaining parents does not a representative sample make.
• Try earning your students' respect by making your course appropriately difficult. We trust you know what is appropriate. Give your students a challenge, then inspire them to meet it (as in this story of Dr. Brockhaus).
• Get down on your knees and thank your lucky stars you have such supportive administrators, who will stand their ground in the face of a parent who takes his complaint straight to the superintendent. Apparently they have great confidence in your abilities as a teacher.

The Irascible Professor provides some sanity in an editor's postscript:

The IP always views anecdotal evidence with some skepticism, so he is not sure that those parents who really would prefer that teachers lower both their expectations and their standards are in the majority.  However, there are enough of them, and they are vocal enough to explain Elise's experiences.

No one said that teaching was going to be a complaint-free profession. Deal with it.

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(3/13/2004) Retroactive update: We didn't realize it at the time, but Joanne Jacobs had a post up where she quoted a Computer Science professor on the nature of high standards and free rides:

The impression that students are looking for an easy ride is completely inaccurate, at least for most students. The problem, from my perspective, is a vicious cycle in which nonchallenging high school courses result in disrespect from students, which in turn gives teachers the impression that students don't want challenge, so the courses get watered down even more, etc. The solution is for teachers to make their courses demanding and not to apologize about it.