One in five Finnish teachers bullied by parents
Finnish parents are bullying their kids’ teachers, although the teachers rarely complain about it…
Nearly one in five Finnish schoolteachers and one in three principals are targeted with bullying and mental violence by students’ parents. The primary level comprehensive school headmasters, in particular, are harassed. This was the finding of a survey conducted by the Opettaja (Teacher) magazine.
Now is ths really “bullying”…?
Bullying parents have threatened they would contact the board of education, the provincial administrative board, or the press.
If the teacher is doing something wrong, the board of education and others should know about it. Now if the teacher isn’t doing anything wrong, yet the parents still threaten this, if I were a teacher I’d say, “You’re right, the administration should know about this, let’s call them together right now and you can explain the situation.” Call the parents’ bluff.
Yeah, my sister USED to have a phone until the student’s parents would call during midnight weekends etc. Very abusive, often drunk giving “advice” on how to do her job. After the parents got abusive to her kids aswell, they had to take a new “secret” number.
Problem is that there’s never anything wrong in your kids. Never.
Comment by Kras — Wed, Aug 31st, 2005 @ 4:31 pm
One thing that the story pointed out was that most often the bullying parents are the parents of those kids who have two different faces at home and at school. You know, the bitch/asshole whose parents think that they’re the smartest, most beautiful little angel on the planet and who is actually the meanest, most ill-behaved brat.
I went to school with a couple of those kids and I would not be surprised at all to find out now that our teachers would have been harrassed by their parents.
Comment by Anzi — Wed, Aug 31st, 2005 @ 5:16 pm
Not sure, but I think it should be “have been bullied” at some point of their careers.
Comment by M — Wed, Aug 31st, 2005 @ 5:29 pm
As a son of two teachers, I’ve had the chance to follow my parents’ struggle with the parents of their students at close distance. I can assure you that they have had more than their fair share of bullying from the (comprehensive school) students’ parents. This usually takes the form of verbal abuse or outright threats. I don’t think my parents ever took the cases to the administration, probably because it would most likely makes things only worse, as they were expected to work together with the parents on some issues, like regular meetings discussing the progress of students etc.
For some reason some of these parents seem to think that if their son/daughter is not doing well in school or has run into trouble by breaking the rules, the only explanation to this is that the teacher is not doing his/her job right. It seems like these parents expect the school to take all responsibility raising the kids, instead of supporting the parents’ efforts raising them up and concentrating mostly on educating the children. This seems to be the case especially with parents suffering from substance abuse, as might be expected.
I’d also like to point out that the teachers have virtually no means whatsoever to keep order in the classrooms or the school yard. They can only tell the students to behave properly. Removing a disturbing or violent student from class or school area by physical means can only take place if the situation is critical, else the teacher risks losing his/her job and facing a possible law suit.
Comment by KM — Thu, Sep 1st, 2005 @ 2:04 am
There is one problem to the suggestion Phil is making here. See, in the Finnish system, the fact that someone files a complaint already makes you a suspect. And, contrary to popular beliefs, Finns don’t think a suspect is innoxent until proven guilty, quite the opposite.
Finns tend to think that once an authority is dragged into the case, someone must be punished. And since the administrative board has no authority over parents, it is the teacher who gets the raw deal.
Now, teachers do have it quite well in the sence that many of them hold a tenure, so they really can’t be fired unless they do something really stupid like leave bruises or cuts when they beat up a kid. So, the kids’ parents don’t really have much leverage but their hollow threats.
If the parents know the right people, though, then the teacher may be in trouble. And I’m not talking about Hell’s Angels or Bandidos, I’m talking about city officials etc.
Comment by Tiedemies — Thu, Sep 1st, 2005 @ 12:37 pm
There is the chain of command, in that complaints should be directed tot the nearest concerned party - the teacher - and if not possible, his superior. Like, teacher, principal, and then the city officials. Going past this on one’s own permit is just “bullying” or disturbance.
Comment by sepisp — Thu, Sep 1st, 2005 @ 2:46 pm
If the parents know the right people, though, then the teacher may be in trouble. And I’m not talking about Hell’s Angels or Bandidos, I’m talking about city officials etc.
Another good reason to get the government OUT of the school system!
Comment by Phil — Thu, Sep 1st, 2005 @ 3:24 pm
“Another good reason to get the government OUT of the school system!”
What are the other reasons?
Comment by M — Thu, Sep 1st, 2005 @ 6:32 pm
“If the teacher is doing something wrong, the board of education and others should know about it. Now if the teacher isn’t doing anything wrong, yet the parents still threaten this, if I were a teacher I’d say, “You’re right, the administration should know about this, let’s call them together right now and you can explain the situation.†Call the parents’ bluff.”
No matter who’s right or wrong, the idiot parents can easily waste endless amounts of everybodys time. And there will be some such parents every year. Their half-wit brats will spend at least 9 years at school each and the parents will steal a week or two of each teachers time every year. Altogether the time and energy stolen by these nuisances probably accounts for the reported drop of Finland’s technological standards, which you discussed elsewhere on your blog.
Comment by Tom — Thu, Sep 1st, 2005 @ 8:52 pm
What are the other reasons?
Too many to count. Let’s see, more teachers making decisions rather than politicians. No forced religion upon kids. Many more families will have more opportunity to pick the school of their choice, similar to how the wealthy can today. Schools could actually deal more with the bulllying, if the parents are being bullies, “bye bye”, you and your kid are gone from the school.
Comment by Phil — Thu, Sep 1st, 2005 @ 9:22 pm
Altogether the time and energy stolen by these nuisances probably accounts for the reported drop of Finland’s technological standards, which you discussed elsewhere on your blog.
So a few years ago when technology was #1, Finnish teachers didn’t have trouble with bullying parents?
Comment by Phil — Thu, Sep 1st, 2005 @ 9:24 pm
Phil, I couldn’t find the approppriate tags. Obviously there have always been bullying parents and other kinds of unnecessary inefficiencies in shool resource usage. Without them, however, the schools and teachers could do a lot better job.
Comment by Tom — Fri, Sep 2nd, 2005 @ 7:57 am
“So a few years ago when technology was #1, Finnish teachers didn’t have trouble with bullying parents?”
Few years ago teachers had more power and means to keep the peace in classroom and could consentrate more to the actual teaching than keeping those brats in order.
When I was in school (more than just a few years ago) raising the kids was primarily job of the parents, not teachers. Today there is parents who doesn’t seem to have time to spend with their kids due to their work & hobbies so they doesn’t even know what kind of troubles their kids are having. Some things -for example right and wrong- should be teached already before the school.
Comment by ipe — Fri, Sep 2nd, 2005 @ 8:54 am
Hmmm… this blog software is weird. I tried to write:
“Phil, I couldn’t find the approppriate sarcasm tags”, but I put that word sarcasm in those bracets that are used around tags <> but the whole word disappeared. I guess sarcasm just is, it won’t show.
Comment by Tom — Fri, Sep 2nd, 2005 @ 12:17 pm
I’m looking for info on teachers being bullied by their students. I don’t know if I’m crazy, but I feel like I’m being attacked by wolves every time I walk in to my Grade 10 English class. They are a particularly aggressive bunch and have no problems finding blame or openly critisizing the class and what I expect of them. Is this now the norm or am I just old fashioned in thinking students need to sit down, listen and cooperate with their teachers in order to learn?!
Comment by T.K. — Wed, Sep 14th, 2005 @ 6:45 am
…i’m student at a german school and in here they still don’t know the difference between disciplin-so sitting down and cooperate-and and fear of numbers…in here most of the students just say what the teacher want’s to hear,so that they dont get bad marks,and a lot of teachers like this strange kind of authorety and use it-and who does not follow will be punished with bad marks…i dont know exactly wether a teacher does not recognise that studens lie and copy, and wether students don’t realise the dictatorship.but what i know is that in here there is no chance to discuss ore criticise anything-after the lessons your ‘frinds’ come to you to say oh your’e so right and someone has to tell the truth-but they dont…none of the ones shouting that loud would say anything directly in the teachers face-no discussion, no bulliing(at least wich i knew of-and i don’t want it)-the only thing wich kounts is a good a level and being better than the others-may be there is someone who was interested in this… p.s.:i’m sorry for everyone who’s bullied-be brave, thank you
Comment by peter — Thu, Nov 3rd, 2005 @ 1:13 pm
Hi. Would you provide me with the e-mails of some Finnish Teachers or Linguists if they don’t mind?I intend to collect some data.
Comment by Farhad — Mon, May 28th, 2007 @ 5:16 pm
Hello. I’m a student teacher and currently attend Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. I’m researching the incidences of bullying by parents and was initially surprised by this task, because quite honestly, it hadn’t occured to me that it was going on at the rate that it appears to. Does anyone have insight into the socio-economic status and correlation with increased or decreased incidences of bullying by parents towards teachers? Is there a social undercurrent linked to today’s information age, progressive education, and economic pressures that family’s experience?
-Ms.A
Comment by Par — Fri, Feb 8th, 2008 @ 4:55 pm
As a parent in the US, I have been appalled by the ease of these cowards to take the lives of students and teachers. The killings at VA Tech were a watershed event. How do so many young adults die at the hand of a very unskilled shooter. It’s the ‘training’ our students receive which says ‘dive under a desk’.
Unarmed does not mean incapable. Students and Teachers can overcome these attacks and defeat the attackers themselves. They must, because Police cannot arrive fast enough.
Stay Alive in a Shooting: Common Sense that isn’t Common Knowledge
ISBN 978-0-9776772-7-6 Contains 121 pages of insight and information Parents and Students can use to keep themselves alive in these active shooter situations.
The book is available in paperback and download from
http://www.workplaceviolencehandbook.com/stalinscsh.html.
Comment by dbvanhorn — Sun, Sep 28th, 2008 @ 8:21 pm