Tuesday, November 18, 2014

The effect of parental incompetence on education ... By Benjamin Demille

Dear Mitchell Chester,

The title kind of says it all.

There are an impressive number of bad parents in America.  There are parents who genuinely believe that infants cry at night just to "piss off" their parents.  (Yes, I actually heard a young mother in Fitchburg make this claim about her newborn.)  There are parents who believe that alcohol is a food group and that reading a book is a loathsome task never to be undertaken again after leaving school.  There are parents who believe that brutalizing and terrorizing other people's children is their child's God given right, and that fear is equivalent to respect.

Bad parents and their violent progeny have an overwhelmingly detrimental effect upon the effectiveness of America's education system and upon the subsequent behavior of individual victims that public officials, elected or otherwise have consistently refused to acknowledge.

Your recent effort to ruin the careers of thousands of teachers by tying their licensure to their evaluations is a good example of how far public officials are willing to go in order to avoid acknowledging the seriousness of parental incompetence and to redirect the public's attention away from the real source of our problems.

Here's your homework question:

Will anyone in a position of authority be acknowledging this problem before the next Oklahoma City, Columbine, or Sandy Hook reminds everyone of the cost of denial?


Regards,

Benjamin Demille


This letter was sent to Commissioner Mitchell Chester, the Board of Education, and The Boston Globe.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mr. DeMille ... You hit the nail on the head ... Mitchell Chester, like Pia Durkin, will never acknowledge parental incompetence because of the ease both are allotted in blaming educators. Sadly, they know that most teachers cannot or will not fight back for fear of retribution such as constant scrutiny (aka repeated punitive evaluations). Fortunately educators in the Commonwealth recently found their lost cojones and sent a strong message that they are tired of being bullied. The empowerment felt by teachers across the state is spreading like wildfire. Collectively we just "won one for the good guys". Stay strong now ... We still live in a democracy . Stand together and watch the effect your unity your has on your profession and ultimately you students!

Anonymous said...

Now that's some data we can believe in. It's obvious that the majority of public school teachers are more invested in the minds and futures of children than a significant number of parents.

Anonymous said...

Go out in public anywhere and you will see these parents. They let their children run wild in stores touching merchandise they won't buy, being generally disrespectful. They get out of cars in busy parking lots and just let young children run from the car. You can see their children roaming the streets at night or during the day when they should be in school. They call the schools regularly to complain when a teacher gives a punishment for bad behavior, they disrespect the teachers in front of the students. I could go on and on but I'm sure you all get the picture! Teachers know where the problems begin!