Teachers go through the same things parents do? Excuse me?

So there was this:

Have to agree with Ms Chen in response to the tweet by “AFTunion”. Still, let’s look at it a bit more.

Yes, teachers or there administrators, have fought to get legal recognition as being “in loco parentis”–basically authority to act as if they were parents to the kids when the kids are under their care. This allows them to do things like authorize medical care if a child becomes sick or injured. Fair enough. However being “in loco parentis” does not make you the same as the kid’s parent. It just doesn’t.

I have yet to see one of my daughter’s teachers sitting with her in the ER in the wee hours of the morning waiting for test result to see if she was going to be admitted of if the problem was nothing major and we could go home and maybe laugh about being over-cautious the next day. I have yet to see one there biting their lip when she is admitted (I had been hoping for “it’s nothing; go home”), calling their boss saying, “nope, not coming in today.”

I have yet to see one of my daughter’s teachers staying up worrying because she’s late coming home and her phone goes immediately to voicemail. Was she just being rebellious or had something happened to her? I hadn’t seen a teacher worrying about it.

I have yet to see one of my daughter’s teachers combing the neighborhood looking for a pet that had gotten loose and we’re trying to find it. I have yet to see a teacher wondering how to console the inevitable heartbreak if the pet never turns up or if it’s hurt or killed. (Turned out okay in this case–having a grand old time running around the neighborhood.)

I’m sure that sometime, somewhere, some teachers have done those things and others like them for some of the kids they teach. After all, it’s a big country. Some pretty low probability things happen from time to time. After all, between public and private schools there are close to 4 million teachers in the US. That means there are 4 that are “one in a million.” But none of my daughter’s teachers were ever there for any of that stuff or the thousand and one other things that I, as a parent, deal with at any given time.

So, no, being a teacher does not mean you “go through the same things as parents.” The idea is absurd. This is not to say that some teachers are not parents but, well, if they really think that as a teacher they go through the same things in relation to students that are not their own children as they do with their own children, then I have to wonder just what kind of parent they actually are.

But, of course, it wasn’t an actual teacher who wrote that risible tweet. It was a union hack. And the purpose wasn’t to educate or enlighten. It was to boost the importance of teachers, and in particular the teachers’ union, and downplay that of parents.

They want to overrule the power of parents, with none of the responsibility.