PHD in Parenting.com says, “The perfect parent is a myth. That person does not exist. We all make choices as parents, some free choices and some forced choices. Sometimes we are able to do what is best for our children and sometimes we are not.”
If parents cannot be perfect all of the time or even some of the time, then why does the United States expect perfection from its public school teachers?
Probably because films like the Blackboard Jungle, Stand and Deliver, Lean on Me, The Miracle Worker, and The Great Debaters—for example—may have created an unrealistic expectation that every teacher should be perfect.
There are about 3.2 million public school teachers in the US. Many of them are parents too. They work in almost 100,000 public schools—more than 67 thousand elementary schools; more than 24 thousand secondary schools, and about 6 thousand combined schools in addition to 1,296 other types of public schools.
Those 3.2 million teachers work with more than 55 million students in13,809 different school districts spread out among 50 states and territories.
Expecting 3.2 million public school teachers to be perfect while working with 55 million imperfect children coming from imperfect homes and imperfect parents is an imperfect expectation.
Does every soldier that goes to war earn a Medal of Honor?
Have you ever worked in a large company where every employee was perfect every day, every moment—even the bosses?
Yet many Americans seem to expect teachers to be extraordinary.
In an Op-Ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, Ellie Herman said, “Yes, we need to get rid of bad teachers. But we can’t demand that teachers be excellent in conditions that preclude excellence.”
I recommend you click on the above link and read what Ellie had to say about the students she taught. I taught for thirty years and could have said about the same thing.
Discover The Self-Esteem Train Wreck
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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition].
His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.
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Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 