03/11/2008 Blog «The Legel Report»

I didn’t write this up immediately yesterday because I thought I ought to give it some time. I told myself maybe I would be enlightened eventually and wouldn’t be so negative. It didn’t work. I called Ben’s teacher about a half hour before class time early yesterday morning and got her voice mail. I left a message asking her to call me back about some details regarding the robot club’s upcoming trip and whether they would need me. I didn’t get an answer so I called her cell phone just before lunch time and left another message asking her to return my call. About a half hour later Ben called to tell me his teacher had told him she was “too busy to return your call” and that he was supposed to call me and tell me that “sufficient adult supervision had been acquired over the weekend” and she wouldn’t be needing me. Ben said he thought I could go anyway but it might cost me for hotel and meals, but he didn’t know. I didn’t pressure Ben any about this and just let it go. My immediate reaction was to call this woman and leave a rather forceful voice message but decided it was probably best to leave it alone and be thankful I wasn’t “needed”. I thought it was incredibly tactless for her to ignore my calls and then inexcusably rude for her to make Ben deliver her message to me. I didn’t call Ben ... I called her. I didn’t need her permission to talk to Ben about it ... I wanted to talk to HER about it. To get some answers such as - Could I come anyway if they didn’t need me? And if so, how much would it cost? And some other things. But she was so busy she had to insult both Ben and I by treating us as inferiors and by making Ben do her bidding. Perhaps she felt because Ben asked me in the first place it was somehow Ben’s job to turn me down. Obviously Ben asked me because he was told to help find volunteers and this thoughtless teacher never even considered how cruel it was to make Ben call and refuse my offer to help. I’m sure this whole thing has left Ben feeling somewhat as though it was somehow his fault for asking me when I wasn’t needed. This just chalks up another example for me of how some teachers seem to be oblivious to the thoughts and feelings of their adolescent charges and the unwarranted superiority they feel over parents. I can’t tell you the number of times I have had teachers send answers home with the boys instead of returning phone calls or notes. I hardly ever expect them to even answer their phones anymore. Just too busy to do their damn jobs I guess.

To stress my point ... consider if these teachers were working in the “Real World”. They would never think of saying to a co-worker, “I’m too busy ... call this person and tell them NO.” But because they are working with non-adults who can’t refuse them they think nothing of dumping on them. Of even stressing the fact that, “I am the teacher and you are the powerless kid. You do what I tell you and do my dirty work. Now call your Dad and give him the bad news I am too shallow to tell him myself.” And they never think twice about the unspoken message it sends to both the student and the parent. “La-Dee-Dah but I am so important I can treat you commoners like I’m a public school teacher!”

All in all it is better I not get within earshot of this ridiculous woman if this is how she “teaches”. The school system treats these kids with no respect and wonders why the kids are disrespectful in return. They treat the parents with the same disrespect and then complain that parents aren’t “compliant with school policy” ... as if we are simply minions to do their bidding. It’s no wonder they have trouble getting parents to “volunteer”.

I guess I won’t be going to Milwaukee with Ben after all.

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