Schools exist between a rock and a hard place, a scylla and charybdis of serving two often conflicting clients. I do not mean politicians, national, state and local government or teacher unions. I mean parents and students.
I was reminded of an example of this I experienced a few years ago. A talented and industrious student was in tenth grade so was making her subject and course selections for the following two years, and thus her university choices. However, she had studied classical dance for about ten years and by all accounts was good at it. Certainly it was her passion and she made it clear that that her desired future was to study dance at a deeper level and to pursue a career as a dancer or dance teacher.
Her father had other ideas. He had already decided on her future, she was to be a doctor and so must study specified subjects, take specified courses and obtain specified grades so that she could successfully apply to the three or four universities he had already chosen. Her wishes were irrelevant, and although he had sent her to dance classes for almost ten years, investing in classes, competitions, transportation, shoes etc and presumably attending numerous recitals over that time, he publically declared that dance had no value.
The school had to balance the wishes of the child with those of the parent which raises both moral and legal considerations. My position was and is that the teacher's duty is to the student and the school's duty is to the parent. This frequently generates a conflict which schools must navigate very day. Do they or when do they inform a parent of late work, work not done, poor grades, misbehavior, rudeness, missed class and so on?
I had a situation where a custodial parent had moved city and state to avoid a former partner and had insisted that her daughters' names and images never be used publically so that he could not find them. This of course presented problems with photographs of sports events, concerts, even the state science fair. The problem was that the daughters made no secret of their desire to maintain contact with their father, expressing it frequently verbally and through their writing.
Of course, one day the father appeared at the school and we had to tell him that we did not know the children he was asking about and that they were not students there. On this occasion, I had taken previously legal advice which was that the custodial parent had the right to ask me to keep her daughters' status secret, unless the non-custodial parent produced some kind of legal demand or Child Protective Services or law enforcement were to ask. The girls' wishes were not to be considered.
About ten years later, another parent of the school from that time sent me an article which showed that the elder daughter had run away from home several years before and was still missing. While I grieve for that mother, I do wonder if the daughter's departure was connected with the ban on seeing her father and whether her wishes should have been considered.
I have seen multiple instances where one parent says for example "no sugar" and the other says "sugar is ok" and the student is presented with a slice of birthday cake or a cupcake at a classmate's birthday celebration. The child wants the treat and while one parent says s/he can have it, the other says no. I have had parents insist that Joe must eat everything in his lunchbox while she says no and refuses to eat the broccoli. I have had parents say that Suzy cannot play a particular game yet she sees all friends playing it and wants to join them. I have seen many high school romances where parents had no idea and would not have approved, several inter-racial, inter-religious or same-sex.
Which takes us back to the dancer. I do not know what happened subsequently; at the time, her father's pressure prevailed and she took the courses he wanted. I still do not know the definitive answer to the question, "Whom does the school serve - parent or child?". I think we do have a mediation role between parent and parent or between parent and child and I was told once that amongst the many roles of a school is helping parents be better parents. Ultimately however, and I know it is a cop out, the child is a minor and in the absence of a court order, the parent has the authority. And yet ...
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Further reading
https://teaching-abc.blogspot.com/2014/08/again-what-is-school-to-do.html
https://teaching-abc.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-is-school-to-do.html
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