I’m a teacher who struggles with challenging students. How do I deal with their challenging parents?

With advice from Muriel Spark and Socrates

‘There was a Miss Jean Brodie in her prime’

I’m a teacher who struggles with families and their challenging students. Among the greatest of these challenges are the parents, who in some cases (mercifully few) are without question the route cause of their children’s behaviour and themselves rude, aggressive, ill informed (or worse). Two primary issues arise: how do you talk to an adult you don’t know about the behaviour of their children, secondly should I consider my self as entitled to give advice, pass judgement or challenge, the views and behaviours of these parents, as I do their children?

Thank you for writing in with this fascinating question: I love expanding the remit of Fictional Therapy beyond love, sex & relationship advice. I have to admit, however, that I was a little hesitant about getting back to you. After all, should I consider myself entitled - as a therapist whose qualifications are fictional in every sense of the word - to give advice on the delicate protocol surrounding parent/student/teacher relationships? Perhaps grandiosely, I have decided yes, though I hope you also refer to whatever conduct manual teachers keep pride of place on the top shelf in their offices.

Firstly: thank you for being a thoughtful and passionate educator, concerned with the ethics of their job and the wellbeing of their students. The fact that you have written in shows you care about what you do - and in an era in which teachers are overworked, underpaid, and undervalued, I’m glad there are people like you.

But - do you have the right to challenge the behaviour of your students’ parents? Well, I can see why you’d want to. It must feel near impossible to positively impact a child’s life if you know everything you’re teaching them is getting undone the moment they return home. And literature is stuffed with teachers who change students’ lives by offering a new perspective on family maltreatment, from Jane Eyre’s Miss Temple to Matilda’s Miss Honey. In real, literary history, French writer Albert Camus had his life transformed by a teacher who challenged the beliefs of his guardians. Camus was born into poverty, expected to leave school to work at fourteen. But noticing his love of learning, Camus’ teacher, Albert Germain, went to see the boy’s grandmother, and convinced her to let him stay in school. After winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, Camus wrote to Germain: ‘Without that affectionate hand you extended to the poor boy I was, without your teaching and example, none of this would have happened.’

And yet, a teacher’s influence can be as insidious as it can be inspiring. For every Miss Honey there is a Mrs Trunchbull; for every Miss Temple a Mr Brocklehurst. Muriel Spark’s brilliant novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is perhaps literature’s most infamous example of the persuasive and problematic power teachers can exert. Jean Brodie is the charismatic but unorthodox teacher at a fictional Edinburgh school in the 1930s, who singles out six girls to mould into the the ‘Brodie set’. She delivers unauthorised lessons on art, politics, ‘the existence of Einstein and the arguments of those who considered the Bible to be untrue’ - as well as lessons on her own love life. Miss Brodie expands the girls’ intellectual vistas while also overstepping boundaries and encouraging them down dark paths. ‘Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life’, Miss Brodie declares; revealing a hunger for idolisation that ultimately takes priority over the true development and maturation of her pupils.

This is why I’m hesitant to tell you you are ‘entitled to pass judgement’ on the behaviour of your students’ parents. To give you this authority would be to give it to every teacher, and some are rubbish, cruel or worse. Besides, I’m not sure that a teacher’s role is to have greater authority than that of a parent (unless, of course, we’re talking about a safeguarding issue). Rather, a teacher has ultimate authority within their remit, which is the school. So, when talking to parents, instead of attempting to assert the moral supremacy of your position, I would be inclined to focus on your need to uphold the values of your institution while children are in your care, regardless of what parents choose to do at home.

What does this mean in practice? Let’s say you call in a parent whose daughter behaves badly in science. When questioned, the parent says, ‘Girls are bad at science so I told her not try, and she’s not going to go to university anyway’. Instead of telling them directly that they are sexist or wrong, I’d say something like, ‘Well, at this school one of our principles is that every child gets treated equally, regardless of their race, gender or background. So, whatever you encourage her to do at home or in later life, in the classroom she’s expected to learn and engage in the same way as all her peers. I’ll need her to do this from now on otherwise… (insert consequence).’

It’s a subtle difference, but the point is to avoid trying to win the argument - avoid implying that the child has to pick a side. Instead, you’re just calm and firm about the fact that while at school, these are the expectations.

You may be thinking this will establish one set of rules for home and another for school, which is confusing. But I think children are more proficient code-switchers than we give them credit for. Any teenager who’s ever turned on the charm in front of a girl they fancy knows it’s possible to behave in different ways round different people. I wasn’t allowed to swear in my house growing up. Did it stop me from swearing in front of my friends? Of course it didn’t (sorry, mum). But I never found it hard to maintain that boundary. In fact, far from being detrimental to a child’s development, I’d say that learning to adjust your behaviour to diverse settings is an important life skill: it’s good to understand that the language of the playground isn’t appropriate in a job interview.

And, if you can be clear, consistent and authoritative about the beliefs and expectations in your classroom - without directly ‘passing judgement’ on the value system at home - you may be giving your students the most valuable life lesson of all. You will be teaching them that there is more than one way to live, and that they, ultimately, will get to decide how to go about it. Leaving space for critical thinking in this manner aligns with the philosophy of teaching set out by Socrates (and conveyed through his student Plato). The Ancient Greek philosopher argued that a teacher’s role is not simply to impart knowledge - not simply to be the arbiter of truth - but to allow students to discover what is true for themselves. In this instance, the very fact of their being two value systems will enable the child to reflect on which is morally superior. And if in the long term they choose your system because they can see it is better, rather than because they have been told it is the only one, then their embodiment of your values may be more profound.

Now, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be a passionate advocate for the values you stand for - in fact, I think you should be. But you can do this and still avoid engaging in a power struggle with parents in which one person is deemed winner. To go back to the girl who doesn’t try in science: if you think it’s important to encourage girls in STEM subjects, you can ensure that famous female scientists are on the curriculum, that girls aren’t spoken over in the classroom, and that you earnestly embody the belief that all students have the same potential while teaching them. You could also share national data which shows girls and boys perform about the same in science, if students parrot sexist views. More broadly, if you think curiosity and hard work are essential values in your classroom, you can strive to teach and plan lessons in a way that is dynamic and exciting. And if you’re in a position to do so, you can try to ensure these values are embedded in the fabric of your institution. All these things would be, in my opinion, a better use of both your time and personal authority than arguing with parents.

Because here’s the thing. However compelling you may be as an individual, there is a limit to how many arguments you can win - but if you nurture a value system, you’re creating something much bigger than yourself. What’s more, if students only obey you because you seemed stronger or smarter than their parents, what will they do once you’re gone? Another truth that The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie demonstrates is the fundamental weakness of a group bound together only by the force of an individual, rather than by any sense of spiritual or moral affinity. In Spark’s novel, without the cult-like influence of their teacher, the Brodie set ultimately falls apart. As an adult, one of the set - Sandy - is asked about her teenage influences - ‘Were they literary or political or personal? Was it Calvinism?’ Tellingly, Sandy can only reply: ‘There was a Miss Jean Brodie in her prime’. Her teacher’s influence has been enormous, yet unfocused - both gargantuan and strangely ephemeral. With Miss Brodie gone, her influence dies with her; impossible to recreate.

I do think there’s a real place for individualism in teaching - in fact, I think there should be more space for teachers to bring passion and personality into the classroom. And I firmly believe there’s no way to teach a value such as respect or curiosity unless you embody it yourself. But I think you can have an inspiring influence on your students without needing to pass judgement on the behaviour of their parents. As the poet George Herbert declared, ‘Living well is the best revenge’ - teaching well can be your greatest victory.

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