Slowly but surely and thanks to most of the competition, education is becoming a hot topic.

I get news about “teachers face jail time if…”, “teachers are no longer allowed to…”, “teachers have to…”, “students are asking teachers to…”, about “parents, who believe that teachers should have…” and so on

And I say this from the point of view of a teacher who has always advocated the observance of students’ rights and constant cooperation with parents for the benefit of education. However, respecting the rights of each participant in the educational act does not mean mixing roles and responsibilities. Vice versa.

Students are students.

Teachers are teachers.

Parents are parents.

Or at least it should be.

Society is a mirror of the education system and vice versa. And in an era when the identity crisis defines the majority of society[1]roles in education become, in turn, uncertain.

Students give lessons to teachers about the grading system. Parents check the quality of the educational act and evaluate the teachers, and the teachers learn from them what is the correct behavior in the lesson, and when there are doubts about the teaching methodology, the scientific correctness of the information transmitted, the optimal way of compliance for the formation of skills, turning to parents or students . Thus, we risk becoming an educational dystopia. Parents and students know what for and as, and teachers should learn from them.

Students are teachers.

Teachers are students.

Parents are teachers.

Or at least it shouldn’t be.

The phenomenon is wider than it seems at first glance. At the global level, there is a campaign to discredit experts, regardless of the field in which they work, to distrust their actions and verdicts.[2]. Confusion of access to information with the acquisition of knowledge. Any form of authority is repugnant, including (or especially) scientific authority. And society lacks trust in the educational act. Since the educational system has always been based on a hierarchical system, the transfer of information and the formation of skills involve the exercise of power[3]criticism of teachers’ activities is inseparable from criticism of their authority.

This conclusion does not mean accepting the extreme that believes that the teacher knows everything, that once he is in the pulpit, no one can teach him anything and nothing can change him. Adapting Gabriel Liiceanu’s well-known formula, we can say that no teacher should remain “stuck in a project”. On the contrary, each teacher discovers together with his students, satisfying their curiosity, his view of the world becomes constantly wider. And the main way of continuous training of teachers is daily interaction with students. This is a normal phenomenon of educational partnership.

But neither students nor parents are the ones to teach teachers how to grade, how to teach, or how to create the perfect schedule to respect the “effort curve.” Even if they are discredited, there are experts for these areas as well. And when everything does not work in optimal parameters, you have to intervene.

Teachers should respect students and their parents, students should learn from teachers and parents, and there should be a partnership between parents and teachers for the benefit of the student. And teachers, in turn, should be respected by parents. This will increase the chances that students will appreciate their teachers and remember that:

Students are students.

Teachers are teachers.

Parents are parents.

We should not forget that if a situation causes us discomfort, it does not necessarily mean that the context is to blame. Sometimes the problem can be with us. Changing the context doesn’t always solve the problem. Sometimes we have to adapt to the context. This is not an axiom, but when some aspect does not satisfy us, it is also worth considering this option.-Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro