Blinkers to be peeled from apple-eyed parents

The central authorities have recently urged education departments and schools to protect teachers' disciplinary power and support them in disciplining students when necessary.

It is an old problem that teachers "dare not, are unwilling to, or do not know how to" discipline students that engage in bad behavior or violate school rules, fearing their parents will complain.

Many schools do not bother to conduct an investigation into the validity of any parental complaints. Some local education departments and schools include parent complaints in teachers' evaluations. Only those having a clean record in this regard, irrespective of whether the reports are valid or not, qualify to be evaluated as model teachers. That means as long as a parent makes a report to school complaining of a teacher's "misconduct", the evaluation of the latter's performance by his or her employer will be affected.