Cool new term, "Helicopter parents"

[MikeNaked]

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So you prefer working with students whose parents don't care whether they succeed or not? Funny, I've always heard the opposite when it comes to teaching.

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That's why I qualified my statement with:

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Not enough parent involvement > too much parent involvement (as far as job satisfaction goes).

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It's not that lower income parents don't care if their kids succeed or not. Quite the opposite. Lower income parents are simply much more respectful of a teacher's curriculum and assessment decisions than pain-in-the-ass HPs. I would rather have parents get out of the way and let me do my job rather than constantly breathing down my neck.

[MikeNaked]

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He made the job of actually educating students and grading fairly sound basically hopeless. And a career-killer, too.

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It can be. You have to have exacting standards, irrefuatble proof of the student's performance, the support of administration, and iron nads. If you're missing any one of these elements, your life is hell.

Teachers are being squeezed by NCLB and public outcry by higher education and the citizenry on one side and Helicopter Parents on the other.

[Blarg]

From what I read in that guy's article, administration typically doesn't want to deal with the constant stream of freaked out jerk parents any more than the teacher does, so he's saying they put enormous pressure on him, as in job-threatening pressure, to just let pretty much everybody slide. Provable plagiarism, kids who never showed up, etc.

This guy was saying it was so bad that parents would threaten law suits and such, and sometimes even violence seemed imminent. There was neither proportion nor sense of responsibility on the part of the parents for either their kids or themselves. He definitely made it sound like a nightmare, and one which the administration just got angry about if it went past him and got over to them.

[rusellmj]

Didn't some guy get convicted about a year back for killing his kids hockey coach?
I went to watch my nephew's little league game several years back. When the umpire failed to show they somehow picked me out of the crowd to call the game. I'll never [censored] do that again. Parents from the losing team (who lost by one run) complained so vehemently the game was rescheduled and played again.
Some people just can't take that their kids might not be the best in the world or come out on top every time.

[Blarg]

Parents are horrible these days. Bigger children than their children are.

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"The new term is helicopter parents," said McKee.

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I first heard the term on "60 Minutes" in a story about "echo boomers", the children of the baby boomer generation. Story here.

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They're hovered over by what college administrators call "helicopter parents." Protected and polished, they are trophy children in every sense of the word.


"Everybody gets a trophy at the end of the year. It's something you're used to," adds Gissing. "And you have the rows of trophies lined up on your windowsill, or whatever."

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