Parents and teachers are increasingly finding it hard to talk to one another. More and more parents are turning to the parent group Forældrerådgivningen to mediate discussions that accomplish nothing more than angry words and recriminations.
Fully four out of ten of the inquiries Forældrerådgivningen has received this year come from parents looking for help when communicating with their child’s teacher or school.
“Parents often feel misunderstood and like they are not being heard,” Mette With Hagensen, the head of Skole og Forældre, the parent/teachers organisation, told DR.
Hot at teacher
Hagensen said that parents who feel ignored can often adopt an unpleasant tone, especially via emails and over the internet.
“In difficult cases, the dialogue can get rough,” she said. “These are our children after all, and if we feel like we are being disregarded we can react emotionally.”
Although school leaders felt that relations between the home and school are fine most of the time, some acknowledged that things can get heated now and then.
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“When things go wrong, we see some really nasty things,” Claus Hjortdal, the chairperson of the head teachers' association, told DR. “We have actually had teachers who succumbed to stress-related illnesses because they cannot deal with the attacks.”
Internet brave
Hjortdal said that when someone calls a teacher an ugly name on Facebook or another social media site and 50 people give it a ‘like’, it has an impact on a teacher’s psyche.
“If a parent calls a teacher a bastard during a face-to-face meeting, there is at least a chance to talk about it. On the internet, it never goes away,” he said.
Forældrerådgivningen advises parents that shouting and ugly words do not work, and that they need to be clear in their grievance with the school or teacher and what they would like the outcome of every contact to be, so that everyone involved has a clear picture of the expectations.
“We know from raising our children that not much is accomplished by screaming,” she said.
