There’s something unsettling happening lately, and it has to do with teachers. People seem to defend them almost automatically. We’re scared they might break down if criticised, especially since there are already too few teachers. But there’s one major problem hiding behind all this sympathy: teachers don’t seem to understand what their job actually is anymore.
You’ve probably heard one teacher or another say, “It’s not my job to raise their children.” It sounds reasonable at first, doesn’t it? Except it really isn’t. A teacher’s job is to teach, or in other words, to educate. Those two words mean basically the same thing: passing on knowledge, values, or skills. Parenting means rearing children, which is the act of bringing them up. “Rearing” is a synonym of “breeding,” and “breeding” is a synonym of educating, including the idea of shaping someone’s manners, mind, and behaviour. So yes, the job of a teacher and the job of a parent share the same core meaning, even if we usually stretch “parenting” further in everyday language.
We often add an emotional layer to parenting: protection, care, affection. But even that partly applies to teachers, because of something called the duty of care. It means teachers have a responsibility to protect and guide their students, not just throw information at them and walk away. It’s the same basic principle that also applies to people who take responsibility for others in different spaces, like running a community or a platform, but that’s a topic for another day.
The main difference lies in how things are done, not in what the job is. Think about boarding schools. Teachers there take on nearly every parental role, only without the legal rights of a parent. That alone should make it clear that a teacher’s work and a parent’s work are two sides of the same coin. The confusing part might come from how boarding schools get shown in movies and shows, usually not at all like they are in real life.
I’m not saying teachers don’t have real reasons to complain. Even as a 13-year-old, I’m often disgusted by how many people around my age act. But that kind of behaviour didn’t appear out of thin air. It’s learned. Older generations show the same patterns, just in different ways, yet somehow only parents and teachers get blamed for it. When adults throw up their hands and say, “So be it,” while acting like wild animals, how can anyone be shocked that my generation reflects that, and that parents and teachers can’t even scratch the surface of the problem?
That’s why my message isn’t really aimed at teachers, parents, or my generation alone. It’s for everyone. Stop pointing fingers for a second and look in the mirror. Are you acting the way you expect others to act? What example are you setting? The excuse of “I’m not a parent” or “I’m not a teacher” doesn’t hold up, because every adult influences younger people in some way, even just by existing around them. It’s time people start realising that.
