The Customer is Always Right

In my two months so far of teaching, it has become increasingly clear to me that education has become alarmingly more and more corporate, more business-like in its nature than anything else. It’s probably not a very positive thing, starting off a blog with a whinge about the state of things in the school I work in, but I need a space, and this is it.

Schools, I’m sure, have never not been businesses where profit is the bottom line—who sets up any enterprise without wanting to make money off it? But somehow this is becoming scarier and more in-your-face. When I was in school, yes, there was the yearly irritation of rising fees, random mid-year charges for new schemes, the lot. Teachers need to be paid, repairs need to be undertaken, nothing comes for free, fine.

The change I see, and have experienced the direct effects of, is that of a school, so pervasively soaked in corporate thinking, applying the customer is always right line of thought to students and their parents.

A parent approached the Managing Director of this school the other day with a complaint about my classes. The parent alleged that I placed far too much pressure on (my Grade 6) English students during a timed comprehension test, to the effect that the child found it impossible to concentrate, and that my method of conducting the test was so tremendously flawed there was no possible way any child could pass – according to this mother I should, therefore, conduct the test again, and in a different manner, to ensure that the boy could do better than the 6 marks he got on 20.

Never mind, of course, the fact that every other child in the class found the method in which the test was conducted was fresh, more accessible, relatively easy, and scored above 15 on 20. And forgetting, naturally, that this child has consistently had trouble with paying attention and participating in the classroom, an issue for which I played by the book and referred to the school counsellor to handle, in addition to sending notes to the parent informing of the same.

The method, by the way, is a retake on the traditional text comprehension test. An extract from an appropriate age-/ability-level book was chosen by myself. At appropriate breaks, questions of increasing difficulty were posed. Large-sized, easy-read font. The extract was read by myself out loud, and the children were to read along with me. Once the section was read out, they were given a set amount of time to answer the questions—being allowed to refer to the text, naturally, but answering in their own words. Standards relating to interpret explicit and implicit meaning, reading, listening, and writing were basically being tested, and children’s individual learning styles (primarily visual and auditory) were taken into account through this method.

Like I mentioned, this was taken very positively by the students who even commented during an informal feedback session that this was “easier” for them – and I received good feedback also from another teacher who noted that this did make things much easier for a student—easier in terms of more accessible to understand, rather than easy in terms of hinting/prompting answers.

However, the acting principal, actually the principal of another branch of the same school (our principal was laid off two weeks ago; more on that later), a prick of the highest order, along with the Managing Director, yet another colossal prick (and an illiterate one at that), in a conference with this parent (with me present), refused absolutely to back me up. The parent’s version of the test, which was painted as terrifying and unwarrantedly filled with piss-inducing pressure, was accepted as the truth. The parent alleged that I counted down each second from 60, even. When I tried to explain that (a) I, as a realistic person, could never think of setting 60-second time limits for 11-year-olds, and (b) I didn’t count down but rather announced half-way points in time, I was cut short by the prick Acting Principal with “How can you count down?” and “How could you think of doing something like this?”

The mother of the boy went on to tell me that no child liked my classes and had zero respect for me, while Acting Principal Prick and MD Prick kowtowed and simpered to her, the APP clucking and tutting at each allegation, whilst royally telling me off, at the same time punctuating each rant by the mother by words along the lines of “He’s a new teacher,” “Mistakes will happen in the beginning.”

While no mention was made of allowing the boy to retake the test—where do I have the fucking time?—I swear to God had it come to that I would have put down my papers the next day and walked.

Why such a strong line? Well, here’s the thing: she wasn’t the only parent there.

A mother-father duo was present as well, parents of a student in Grade 7. The student, a girl, is one who spends most of all her classes staring at the boys’ crotches while hitching her skirt quite high. She also refuses to participate in any class activities (considerably an issue, since all my classes have activities/discussions), and when coaxed enough to contribute, usually provides something half-hearted and full of material rich enough to be criticised by other 7^th-graders (not during my classes, but afterwards). The girl also refuses to follow instructions either inside or outside the classroom, always meeting even the most gently-worded requests with rolling her eyes and sighing.

The parents alleged that she was exposed to “bad language” by me in the classroom, and was treated “rudely” and “spoken harshly to” (again, by me) on several occasions. “She is a delicate girl,” the mother said; “a very delicate girl from a very good family who shouldn’t be exposed to this.” When the Acting Principal Prick asked what this language was, the parents, so very genteel, said it was words relating to race and ‘modern relations between men.’

The girl had, for several days, been heard to call one of her classmates, a British Somali girl, a nigger. She also continually called a boy she hitches up her skirt to, a year younger than the rest of the class and still very asexual (thank God someone’s normal, is what I think whenever I talk to that boy), a homo, along with comments like “[Boy’s Name] is so gay, he dances, he’s totally gay.” These comments were absolutely with malice and different to the context in which the rest of the class occasionally used the word (also not very nice, obviously).

Part of one of the classes I teach—Citizenship—is to deal with precisely this sort of bigoted nonsense in a whole-classroom approach, and with Diversity coincidentally the unit ongoing, I had a frank talk about words that are designed to hurt.

One of the techniques employed to get messages across in a classroom without letting other children on (thus exposing them to later comments by other kids) is to hold eye contact with a student maybe a beat longer at key points during direct instruction. This was done with the girl twice, and successfully to the extent that she got the point while the others weren’t aware of her in particular being told anything. I also noticed that in the weeks since (and even at present) the class has not used “homo” or “nigger” and other hurtful language even in the alternate, ‘nowadays’ context (‘that movie was so gay’ ‘what up, nigga,’ etc.), and are actually sensitised to the power of these words.

It was, therefore, completely out of the blue that these parents alleged that I taught these terms to children in the class. I may swear outside of school and I may swear on my fucking blog, but excuse me? I taught your bitch daughter how to further fuel racial hatred and intolerance for gay people? Kids learn this shit from home. They may not learn these exact words from home (there are friends, the media), but they learn every basic concept of what’s okay and what isn’t from mummy and daddy. Your negligence as a parent is what gets these kids to be the way they are at school.

Needless to say, there was more clucking and fussing from the Acting Principal, who again had my balls in a hold by lines like “How can you use such words?” “A teacher needs to be sensitive” and so on. Right in front of the parents.

The father of this particular pair, egged on by the first parent sitting there (the one with the kid with the fail grade) went on to say “Nobody likes you” “You have lost all respect” “You fail as somebody with a degree in Psychology; I have studied Psychology as well—you don’t have the thinking that I do”

Okay, Mr Fake Accent. First of all, I teach about 90-95 students. Three parents is hardly a representative sample to talk about anybody liking me or me losing any respect. Whose respect have I lost? Yours? Your wife with the slutty blouse? This other parent’s? Who doesn’t like me? You lot? Out of about more than a 150 parents?

Second, can you not understand teaching is not about being liked? A teacher who goes after popularity is shit as a teacher. Your daughter doesn’t respect me? Well, too bad. She respects nobody and don’t be surprised when she gets a little older and starts with open disrespect towards you.

Third, you don’t have the thinking that I do? Are you kidding me? You aren’t even a Psych major. And even if you are, you’re outdated by about twenty years to begin with, and another thirty on top of that since you studied in a college in India. What did you learn? What do you remember? Did you intern anywhere afterwards? Counselled anybody? Know anything about the practice of psychology today? Probably not at all, especially since you think that because you studied the subject too, we have to be the same people. 11^th Grade Psychology, Unit 1. Individual fucking differences, man.

The bastard went on to virtually threaten me: “If you were in the Bombay branch of this school, do you know what would have happened? You wouldn’t be able to walk the streets safely. You wouldn’t be able to show your face anywhere.” Also: “I think we need to have a recorder in your classes to make sure our kids are being treated right.”

And again. With the Acting Principal Prick and MD Prick just sitting there. Refusing to let me get in a word. Why? Because parents = customers. Unhappy parents = unhappy customers. Satisfied parents = satisfied customers = $$$. Fuck that, parents = $, period. Well, more rupees than $ anyway.

The customer is always right. The parent is always right. The student is always right. The student cannot possibly have erred, EVER. The teacher is the service provider and customer care exec, education is the service, they are the customers. The customer cannot fuck up.

The meet, anyway, ended, with me apologising (yeah, ugh) and committing to setting all of this straight. They beamed at each other for having gotten their way and let me go with words of wisdom along the lines of “Keep the children happy” “We send them here to be happy, that’s all” and of course, “We’re watching you.”

All of this would have been okay, to a certain extent, if later on the Acting Chief Prick would have said something along the lines of all of that was necessary, it’s fine, chill, let it blow over, they’ve let off steam, this is how it works, we’ve got to be this way, I had to do that to you in front of them to put it all to rest, don’t let it get to you, etc. But no. After the episode was over the bastard takes me aside, literally hisses to me, “What made you do things like that? Are you out of your mind?” In reaction to which I said, “You know, I’d like to not stretch this further. All I want to say is that things have been taken very out of context, and you know how things are with people in general, they add a lot of mirch-masala [spice] to events when talking about it later.”

His reply: “They do not. Don’t even think about letting anything like this happen again. You have one week to set this right.”

And was that the end of it? Nope. There was a general, previously-scheduled meeting with all teaching staff anyway, in which he mentioned what had happened to all teachers. Now there’s a lot of wily bitches on the staff anyway, all out to get each other, but even to them the Prick’s way of talking about it was too much. The bitches aren’t very happy with me being on their staff anyway (new teacher, young teacher, male teacher, new methods of teaching, “international”)—but even to them, they felt it was wrong of the Prick to bare all in the meeting, and in such a biased way. He went on a good 10 minutes about the parent episode, and said something like “Keyvrash was saying that the stories about what happened with these students are made up, I don’t think so” to which I said, without any fucking fear whatsoever of the consequences, “I’m sorry, but I didn’t say made up, I said out of context and stretched” to which he basically dismissed me and moved on to the next topic.

In a later post-mortem of the incident with another male teacher over there, I realised some very fundamental things. Education is a business. Everywhere. Not just international schools like the one I’m in. Teachers are no longer teachers, aren’t supposed to be. Students are customers to be kept happy—give them tests far simpler than standards, inflate their grades, inflate their egos. Don’t even attempt to instil any values in them—even if these aren’t moral values per se, even if these are values of tolerance, liberal values.

Welcome, disillusionment?