I hope Obama can use his political momentum to address the growing need to defend grade school teachers against physical and mental abuse from students. I make this request because the level of indiscipline and lack of proper home-training has grown beyond the borders of being civilized. All the pressures and pain of our children’s education is put on the backs of our teachers and in exchange, they only get a check and a certificate without any form of protection.
When a teacher gets disrespected verbally, she must swallow it as an adult. If a student is sent out of class for being too disruptive, she needs training on how to manage her class better. If she reports constantly about a student to parents or principal, maybe she is not a good fit for school. At teacher-parent meetings, teachers have to tell lies to parents about their children, especially in private grade schools, so that parents wouldn’t gang-up against the teacher. As a former teacher myself, I know that students and parents know that the teacher is always wrong and usually to blame. Sometimes, teachers have to defend themselves physically because the county or school will not. They get punched or beaten, and still have to get fired or suspended for it. They reason that the teacher is the adult and should have prevented it.
Obama has to address this to show that he also cares about teachers, parents, and children of the future. A grade school student that fights a full grown woman by punching her on the face or sitting on her on the ground, most likely has done the same to her mother at home. Many mothers are living in fear of their children and usually call the police for help. I might be wrong, but the rate of occurrence seems to be proportional to the increase of fatherless homes or single parent homes. I just can’t believe that girls who have fathers at home, or fathers who have a say in what goes on at home, can actually go and fight their teachers without the fear of repercussion from home. It is the parent that sets the standard for children to follow and not the teachers, so we cannot let teachers suffer for physically and economically for the irresponsibility of parents.
