Parents Blame Teacher For Their Middle Schooler Failing Math Despite His 30 Missed Assignments & 20 Absences
Seems pretty obvious who's actually to blame here…
Monkey Business Images | Shutterstock There's little question these days that America's education system is in shambles, but virtually no agreement on what and who is at fault. But ask pretty much any American teacher, and they'll tell you that one major aspect of the problem is how they are consistently blamed for students' refusal to do their work and parents' failure to take a proactive role in their kids' education.
A teacher is being blamed for a student failing after he refused to do his work or even show up to class.
A teacher on Reddit posted a story that will surely sound familiar to pretty much any educator. After trying to get a student's parents to meet with him for months, they were finally able to get face-to-face to discuss the student's failing grade in his middle school math class.
"It takes effort to fail my class," he wrote, but this kid has found the easiest way possible. "He’s not usually outright rude or nasty," he said, "but he constantly refuses to do the work. He’s often out of his seat, clearly avoiding tasks." And all that refusal to do the work has really added up.
The middle school student has almost 30 missing assignments and has been absent for 20 days of school this year.
This isn't the typical kid who just forgets to do his homework now and then. "He has almost 30 missing assignments," he wrote, which, if you figure one assignment per school day, is six entire weeks' worth of work out of a typical 15-week semester. He's also missed 20 days of school on top of it.
Clearly, something's going on — a learning disability, an emotional or mental health challenge, something. But his parents vehemently disagree. "The parents finally came in today and immediately knew the problem. It's me. I am a bad person," the teacher wrote, recounting the conversation they had.
"They let me know that I am picking on their son," she went on to say. They claim he doesn't do his homework because his teacher asked him to do his work, return to his seat, and accidentally called him by the wrong name once. "Clearly I am a monster," he joked. "I am so ashamed."
The meeting ended with the parents demanding their son be placed in another class. "I am thrilled that after months of trying to inform parents that their son wasn't doing [his work]... were able to come to the agreement that I am the problem," he quipped.
Teachers say combative parents are a key reason for high teacher turnover.
There was a time when virtually no parent would have greeted this news about their child with hostility. They'd have brought that energy to their kid instead and told him to get his act together. Or, if needed, they'd ask for the additional help he might need at school.
Times have clearly changed, however, because teachers say encounters like this are basically the order of the day now. Subjects in a 2024 Pew Research study about current issues faced by a huge proportion of teachers said conflict with parents was among the top things making their job increasingly impossible.
And they said so by huge margins: 79% said parents don't hold children accountable for misbehavior, 68% said they don't help their kids with their schoolwork, and 63% said they aren't even sufficiently engaged in their kids' attendance at school.
Anecdotally, there are stories all over the internet, from Reddit forums to social media apps and podcasts like "Bored Teachers," in which teachers say it is ultimately today's parents that are pushing them out of the profession, which is suffering a nationwide shortage that does not appear likely to reverse any time soon.
Not to be an elderly crank, but it is literally a parent's job to make sure their kid is doing what they're supposed to be doing at school, and a teacher asking them to do the bare minimum — come to class and do their work — is not "picking on" them. School isn't a daycare, and teachers aren't babysitters. Step up and take ownership of your child's education because that's not a teacher's job. Teaching is.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
