Drop the arrogance: How teachers can help repair the fracture between schools and parents

I won't waste time complaining about the politicization of public education – as much as I may wish that politicians were genuinely concerned about the well-being and growth of our students and didn’t exploit the serious matters of teaching and learning for their own power and control.

It turned out that mythologizing about the teaching of critical race theory in Virginia’s K-12 schools was an excellent way to get elected governor; and Republican officeholders and aspiring officeholders are now selling themselves as a refuge for parents tired of tyrannical public schools.

Such appeals may deserve our contempt based, as they are, on the falsehood that critical race theory, per se, is part of any state’s K-12 curriculum. Also contemptuous is the grotesque implication that a meaningful presentation of our country’s history could be devoid of an honest reckoning of our complicated and disturbing racial legacy.

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Unfortunately, contempt won't set anyone on a more reasonable or inclusive course. In our current political and social climate, disdain for this cynical deception will likely grant it credibility.

What I wish educators could do, instead, is focus attention on our relationship to students and their parents – because however false and unreasonable these allegations against schools, the alienation that enables them to resonate is too often real and justified.

Distrust and resentment of schools and school boards didn’t begin during Virginia’s gubernatorial election. Nor did they start with campus closures and distance learning or mask and vaccine mandates that have provoked so much venom.

Many public schools and districts have their own unfortunate history of corruption and arrogance that undermines the trust of families and the mission of enlightening and inspiring.

Too many of our schools are far too impersonal. We reduce students to their ID numbers and test scores, treat them like suspects in a crime, encourage obedience and discourage – and even punish – originality, individuality and dissent.

Perhaps worst of all is the institutional judgment toward the imperfectness of parents and the sometimes unconscious, or sometimes quite conscious, arrogance that we – educators – alone know what is best for your children.

There are, of course, children whose family lives are dysfunctional, abusive or nonexistent, and educators are sometimes the best or only hope for these kids. Sadly, in 30 years of teaching, I have had to intervene many times on behalf of such children.

Teachers need to see parents as partners

But we should otherwise see ourselves as humble partners of these families. I haven’t always done that and do not believe I am alone in my arrogance.

Mostly, the alienation of families is institutional failure, which a lot of us try to mitigate every day in our classrooms. But the challenge is often overwhelming.

I teach in a part of Los Angeles in which many parents and grandparents suffered the degradation of inferior schools that were de facto segregated and in which students of color were criminalized for perceived misbehavior.

It may not be fair that an educator who wasn’t party to those crimes must help repair that legacy – with parents and with students – but it comes with the territory. We aren’t going to succeed at transforming our students or our schools, or gain the trust of skeptical parents, if we are defensive or thin skinned.

Effective educating requires endless empathy; teachers mostly carry that burden and we shouldn’t have to.

The whole system ought to be built on love, empathy and understanding. It ought to be designed to welcome, empower and transform the most vulnerable and challenged students and families.

Changes must start at the top

And that starts at the top. State departments of education, school district administrators and school boards are often too far removed from the lives of teachers and students and families. They're arrogant and aloof, and not at all ready to really listen. Or differentiate in their approaches – much as they might concoct a mandate for teachers to do so. And they're often uninterested in the nuances of what goes on in the classrooms in which the essential service of education is delivered.

To be clear, anyone who disrupts a school board meeting or school should be removed. Anyone who threatens or commits violence against an educator should be subject to criminal penalties.

But let’s also open the lines of communication. Let’s listen – with respect – to people who disagree with the way we’re doing things.

And let’s be welcoming to students and their families – at the front door and the front desk and inside every classroom of every school.

It is my obligation to justify any curricular or pedagogical choice to any inquiring student or parent and to respectfully listen to any concerns about it – and give serious consideration to any feedback.

A classroom should be a place in which respectful dissent is welcome.

A classroom should never be a place in which the atrocities of the past are in any manner laid at the feet of students.

A meaningful education can sometimes be uncomfortable, but it should never intend to produce shame in any child.

I once asked a Mexican American student about her German last name, and she told me that her grandfather had been a fugitive Nazi. Is there any surprise in the fact that she had no interest in denying the Holocaust or that I had no interest in blaming any of it on her?

It is malpractice for a teacher to deliberately try to make a student feel unintelligent or inferior in any other way, including by association with any race, ethnicity, religion or other identification.

Teaching children is an enormous responsibility, one for which we ought to swear to the same oath as doctors – do no harm.

Ignorance is one potential harm, but so is shame for something over which we have no control.

I decided long ago that I am not a purveyor of truth. I am, at best, a pursuer of the logic with which my students might seek truth.

Much as it may sometimes frustrate my students, my role is not to tell them what to think; it is to push them to learn how to think better for themselves and to model empathy, humility and the right balance of skepticism and open mindedness.

It saddens and angers me to hear about threats and mayhem directed at fellow educators, but I can’t help wondering: What schools did the perpetrators attend and who were their teachers?

Larry Strauss has been a high school English teacher in South Los Angeles since 1992. He is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and the author of more than a dozen books, including "Students First and Other Lies: Straight Talk From a Veteran Teacher" and his new novel, "Light Man." Follow him on Twitter: @LarryStrauss

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why teachers need to listen to parents – and show them respect