The re­cent in­ci­dent in­volv­ing a teacher at the Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School is dis­turb­ing, to say the least. That a mem­ber of this tra­di­tion­al­ly no­ble vo­ca­tion would ex­pose stu­dents, es­pe­cial­ly those of an im­pres­sion­able age, to a vit­ri­olic tirade right­ly war­rant­ed her dis­missal by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. Hope­ful­ly, this sends a clear mes­sage that such be­hav­iour while on the job will not be tol­er­at­ed.

Hav­ing said that, let’s take a step back. It’s easy for us to con­demn this teacher and, worse yet, to use it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to lam­baste the en­tire pro­fes­sion. Af­ter all, teach­ers have it easy, don’t they? They get off work at 2 pm; they get ex­tend­ed va­ca­tions thanks to the sum­mer, Christ­mas, and East­er hol­i­days; and they get paid re­gard­less of how well or poor­ly their stu­dents per­form. And on top of all that, they even have the gall to call for a protest ac­tion over salary ne­go­ti­a­tions… and it’s not even a month in­to the new term!

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this is the per­cep­tion that a lot of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans—those with and with­out chil­dren alike—have to­wards teach­ers, whom they re­gard as lit­tle more than glo­ri­fied babysit­ters. Now I’m not say­ing that all teach­ers are do-good­ers who should be praised. But con­sid­er­ing that they bear the im­mense re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of ed­u­cat­ing and mould­ing our youth, I don’t be­lieve they are giv­en the re­spect they de­serve. That’s why this par­tic­u­lar teacher’s out­burst, while dis­turb­ing, isn’t sur­pris­ing. Let me be clear—I am in no way de­fend­ing what she said. But in­stead of dis­miss­ing her as sim­ply be­ing the “one bad ap­ple”, we should per­haps take heed of her griev­ance and ad­dress the chal­lenges that our teach­ers face.

I am a firm be­liev­er that the man­ner in which the mes­sage is de­liv­ered could be just as im­por­tant as the mes­sage it­self. So if we put aside our out­rage over this teacher’s “colour­ful ex­pres­sions”, her main is­sue was that some par­ents seemed more in­tent on work­ing against teach­ers in­stead of with them. With­out quot­ing her ex­act words, she said that par­ents spend too much time writ­ing let­ters to com­plain about teach­ers when they should be us­ing that time to fo­cus on help­ing their chil­dren. Has any­one stopped to think that maybe she has a point?

At the risk of sound­ing like an old fo­gey, I come from a time when par­ents and teach­ers were part­ners when it came to a child’s de­vel­op­ment. But judg­ing by the news re­ports com­ing out of our na­tion’s school—pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary, gov­ern­ment and de­nom­i­na­tion­al—that re­la­tion­ship seems to have changed, and it’s just as like­ly to be ad­ver­sar­i­al or even non-ex­is­tent. Thir­ty years ago a let­ter sent home to a par­ent usu­al­ly re­sult­ed in the child get­ting a “cut ar­se”. Nowa­days, that same let­ter could eas­i­ly re­sult in a par­ent com­ing to the school to give the teacher the “cut ar­se”. And even if teach­ers aren’t be­ing ac­cost­ed, there are some cas­es where they can spend an en­tire year with a stu­dent and nev­er once meet the par­ents. The re­al­i­ty is that a teacher’s job is that much more dif­fi­cult if par­ents don’t have an ac­tive, pos­i­tive in­ter­est in what and how their child is do­ing at school.

If we were to give the of­fend­ing teacher the ben­e­fit of the doubt, it’s more than like­ly that her out­burst was an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent—a lapse in judg­ment brought on by stress. That be­ing said, I am will­ing to bet that her sen­ti­ments are shared by oth­er teach­ers as well. The on­ly dif­fer­ence is that it is voiced amongst them­selves in the pri­va­cy of the teach­ers’ lounge. Of course, no par­ent wants the em­bar­rass­ment of be­ing told that their child has be­hav­iour­al or scholas­tic prob­lems. Af­ter all, a child’s be­hav­iour in school is seen as a re­flec­tion of their home life. But tak­ing that frus­tra­tion out on the teacher doesn’t help.

On the con­trary, a prob­lem child can al­so gain the rep­u­ta­tion of hav­ing a prob­lem par­ent; the of­fend­ing teacher said as much. This on­ly turns the child in­to a pari­ah, a stu­dent who’s deemed not worth the trou­ble.

I am aware that my opin­ion is on­ly tan­gen­tial­ly re­lat­ed to the in­ci­dent in ques­tion. But some of my favourite peo­ple are teach­ers (Hey Ria!), so I sym­pa­thise that they feel over­worked and un­der­paid. How­ev­er, I am not ig­no­rant to the chal­lenges that par­ents al­so face. It’s un­doubt­ed­ly hard to pro­vide for their chil­dren—to work an eight-hour day to put food on the ta­ble and keep a roof over their heads, to then come home and have to con­tend with home­work su­per­vi­sion.

If it’s a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ties, we all know which is go­ing to fall by the way­side. No par­ent or teacher is per­fect… not even the teacher at the cen­tre of this con­tro­ver­sy. I’m not go­ing to preach that we need to for­give her, but I’d like to think that out­bursts like that could be avoid­ed if teach­ers felt that par­ents were on their side. And that’s some­thing that chil­dren need to un­der­stand.

Let’s re­mem­ber that our na­tion­al pledge lists teach­ers right af­ter par­ents as those they should ho­n­our. Be­cause if you think about it, for eight hours a day school be­comes their home, and teach­ers take the place of their par­ents.