The bad parents

Chronicle columnist, Jon Carroll , stands for a photograph inside the studio on Thursday Jan. 29, 2008 in San Francisco,Calif. Chronicle columnist, Jon Carroll , stands for a photograph inside the studio on Thursday Jan. 29, 2008 in San Francisco,Calif. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close The bad parents 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

It is truth often acknowledged but less often spoken that the main problem with schools today is parents. Oh, don't argue with me. Yes, there's not enough money and the infrastructure - whatever did we do before the word "infrastructure" gained wide circulation? - is crumbling, and kids today, whaddya gonna do? All these things are true, but education is a 24-hour thing, maybe 17 if you don't count the sleeping hours, and if the parents aren't gonna play the game, the kids aren't gonna get anywhere.

But there are all kinds of ways to not play the game. Some of them we are familiar with, and we decry them when we are in the decrying game.

For instance: parents who don't have enough time. They are single parents, and/or they are working two jobs, and/or they can never get to parent-teacher conferences because they are caring for an aging relative, and all the other heartaches of these tough times. And there are some parents who are none of those things, but they don't care and they don't show up.

They believe that school is a scam, or a plot, or a waste of time, or a babysitting service, or whatever. They don't ask their kids about it; they don't check homework; they drink 10 bottles of vodka and leave some Top Ramen on the kitchen counter for dinner. These are the bad parents. Some of them even self-identify as bad parents and occasionally they weep - these are often the vodka parents.

We will ignore for the moment, although not in real life, truly abusive parents. They will be tried in a separate, and more merciless, court.

Whatever kind of bad parent they are, they help set up a situation that leaves the teacher powerless. Let us postulate that there are bad teachers, too, but let's agree that there are more bad parents than bad teachers, because at least you have to take a test to become a teacher.

I am sympathetic to teachers, even though the work they do could hardly be described as "thankless." Maybe the administrators are jerks and the state Legislature is a pain and the parents are annoying and all that, but there's always the kids, and the kids thank you even when they don't thank you. OTOH: long hours, low social status, frequently dreadful food. And the occasional, unexpected heartbreak. Teachers have thick skins, but there are some things that penetrate even the hardest of carapaces.

But what I have been hearing about lately is the exact opposite kind of bad parents, the ones who care too much, and/or the ones who think that little Timmy or Laura can do no wrong. This bad grade must be a mistake, this report of a playground incident is clearly a misunderstanding, this note home from the teacher merely illustrates that the teacher has no understanding of the sensitivities, of the needs, of the intelligence of the beloved little one. His/her essay was actually presaging the work of Immanuel Kant in the "Critique of Pure Reason," since it makes no sense at all, but it makes no sense for a reason.

These are also the parents who believe that the activity known as "running around the playground" is both dangerous and nonproductive. Jump-rope rhymes in French would be so much better.

It's this sense of entitlement you hear about so much. I wrote a column Thursday about the behavior of people in pharmacy lines, and I realized later that "entitlement" was the word I left out. There's just a belief that they are owed things, almost anything. They deserve pride of place because they've been watching too much Oprah or something. They want to be their own best friends, and they do that by insisting that everything must go the way they had planned for it to go.

As the old saying goes, an expectation is just a resentment waiting to happen, and so these folks accumulate a lot of resentments. And because they are also (naturally and normally) protective of their children, they get triply resentful when their child does not meet their expectations, and they decide to lash out at the teacher. Sadly, they are also likely to lash out at the kid, blaming everyone but themselves.

I'm not sure whether this is a modern disease, but it sure seems to have increased in my lifetime. So my message is: Stop it! Right now! Let your teachers teach, and go do an extra hour of yoga. Thank you.