The parent-teacher meeting: A descriptive

 

How many of us have had the circumstance of having to attend a PTM? And how many of us have genuinely wanted another one to come. How many of us agree that it is, in essence, aimed at the collective improvisation of the roles allocated to schooling and parenting or just another of those juicy gossip sessions-just with a more professionally appropriate name.

Truth be told, isn’t the air just frightening on a parent teacher meeting’s day? Particularly for parents who have a fair idea of their children’s progress report and are unwilling to come in the first place. But since the students have been threatened of an equally, or more so, embarrassing situation, in case their parents failed to appear, it feels more sound to a mother to share some of denigration herself. Imagine the character of a school faculty whom the parents don’t consider pleasing to meet and have to be forced to do so. For the most part, these parents have to keep nodding their heads infront of the swarm of complains that, an apparently, more well-read person has thrown over them. In their sight, their children have a lesser important say as compared to the school’s least experienced teacher hardly taking the responsibility of the student who spends almost a quarter of his day in the school and has been treated similar to a troublemaker-labelled kid or even worse.

The parent day teacher notice is also the most useless notice for our parents. Primarily, because a meetup is a two-way communication and the time is just fixed from the school’s end. Meaning, at least half of all the parents have themselves committed, already. Parents are deprived of even being consulted before a time is fixed, let alone being privileged enough to announce their convenience. But largely, the matter is that if parents are asked, each of them will require customized timings which will be burdening upon teachers who aren’t ready to give personal attention to children, set aside, their parents.

 Sometimes I wonder, how easy it is for some teachers to take out their frustration of students who haven’t been scoring well on tests. Just plan a parent teacher meetup and start by humiliating parents and students on a mass level. Then, they probably could increase the amplitude of their intimidating voice and use some educational jargon completely unfathomable to their audience, so that parents of the A-graders could also know that the C-graders are being shamed. This could help them have a fine idea of why their children have been playing with their health and sleeping routines to get As. It’s good that the realty has been divulged upon them. So now they are aware that their kids aren’t some knowledge-loving souls that they have trained really well but just normal people trying to escape humiliation. To be honest, the only difference between A-graders and C-graders is the fact that A-graders know how to take refuge, in grades, from monstrous and targeted episodes of insult while the C-graders don’t.

Anyways, for high achievers, parent-teacher meetings are a day of bliss. This is the reason they never fail to accompany their parents, even if unsolicited. And why not? They are consistently flattered for their progress reports which is obviously, pretty much, positively reinforcing for the years to come. Their parents are told that they have done a great job at raising kids whose happiness lies only in the alphabet A imprinted on their report cards, and that they are content with being the frog whose entire world is cloistered in the well it lives. I feel deep sorrow for such kids. For the rest of their lives, they will compromise on low standards because they have been made to feel like kings and queens for being the best in the 4 walls of their school. Hence, they never dreamt of anything bigger than that.  They never, could find a greater purpose of life. Any challenge greater than getting 90% will stare them in the eyes and unimaginably effortless will it be to make them feel like an utter failure. A whole generation of good-grade-graders has agreed upon corporate slavery already. It is predictable, how lower can we stoop if it continues the same way.

And honestly, when I was one of these pride-filled high achievers and my teachers would count upon me, in these meetings, as one of their outstanding students, I would increase in pride. Unfortunately, pride isn’t the same as self-confidence. It is, in fact, dehumanizing to one’s own self and others. Funnily enough, if I translate those words today after I have taken off my lenses of grade-based arrogance, I would probably think of my teacher calling me outstanding with a silent:

“You are outstanding because you have been able to achieve the maximum of the highest possible standard of this limited spectrum of your school, with one million other schools of its kind and better, that too set by a human being like your very own self and just because we don’t have a more fanatically grade-conscious kid than you, we are urged into making you feel the best, but you should know that one mark less than your competitors could make us withdraw all our support from you and you will be left to feel worthless for the rest of this life”

And laugh at myself!

A descriptive aimed at inviting readers to rethink the present-day parent-teacher meetings and if they are contributing for the good or worse unlike the popular opinion.