Parents are our first teachers

The new governor in our great state has been trying in recent month to drive a wedge between public school teachers and taxpayers.  I guess he doesn't realize that teachers are taxpayers.  Public school teachers here in Milwaukee pay local property taxes at a higher rate than their self-appointed suburban foes.  It is a terrible mistake, and it hurts children, when politicians declare war on the people who educate the next generation.  Parents and teachers need to work together, because whatever lies the politicians may tell about teachers being both greedy parasites and slaves to their union leaders, both good teachers and good parents are in the same business, of helping children grow into the best adults they can be.   That is the most important, and most difficult, business in the world.


I have been both a parent and a teacher, and in both capacities I have met people on both sides of the relationship who do not do their job well.  The law holds teachers responsible for taking the parents' place (in Latin: In loco parentis) during the time children are in their care.  Then again, teaching is a parent's primary responsibility.   


While I can't take sides against either parents as a group or teachers as a group, I know that a teacher does need a license to practice, and bad teachers really can be fired.  Nobody ever got a teaching license by getting drunk at a party.  Teachers have to take classes in child psychology and teaching methods in addition to whatever subject they teach, and if they fail those subjects, they can't get their licenses.  Of course that's no guarantee that they can handle all the demands of the job, but parents can assume that their children's teachers will be at least reasonably competent.  I will examine the problem of bad teachers soon.  


As for the competence of parents, some are magnificent, and some are unfit.  The ability to have a child is not limited to the kindly and wise people among us.  Of course teachers want their students to have parents who care and do their job well.  They may hope a child has good ones and be concerned about a child who doesn't.  Sometimes, teachers will even become parents themselves, which means they really do understand what parents are going through.  I wish that more parents could set aside the distrust and pride that prevents them from working with school staff to assure the best outcome for their children.  Most teachers do care and they have a lot to contribute to their communities outside of the classroom.