Parents Evening

It's L's parents evening tonight. A chance for all the mums and dads* to go to the school and hear the teachers sprout a load of shit about what changes will be made in upcoming weeks that never actually happen but it makes them feel better like they're providing you as a parent with some feedback on your child's progress. It is in short a fucking great waste of time for all but the parents of naughty little shits, who lets face it don't care anyway and won't turn up. If you want little Johnnies mum and dad to know what a disruptive little fuckwit the kid is then why not just drag them in instead of having the whole school turn up, or is that classed as discrimination these days?

The thing is that both me and wife know how L is doing in school. We look at her homework, we talk to her. It works quite well. Tonight we'll get in from work, rush our tea, spend ages looking for a park. Spend even more time sat in a room on tiny chairs waiting for the form tutor to get around to us (they are always way behind schedule, ALWAYS). Finally he will tell us that L is doing fine, ask us if we have any concerns** and then let us get on our way. It's then a case of trying to navigate the car out of the inevitable cluster fuck of a parking situation. Wouldn't this work better if they just sent home a report (which they do) and if your kid is causing/having problems they have you in to talk about it?

*Do many other dads actually go to these things? I've been to every parents evening L has ever had and there's normally at most 2-3 other blokes there? I know my dad never went to any of mine.

**Of course you're not allowed to say anything at this point. Criticise the teacher and be damned. I'll never ever forget when I brought up how L couldn't read properly. I was then told that when it comes to reading it's not reading the actual words that are there that's important but rather just getting a gist of what the sentence is about. At that point we took it upon ourselves to teach L the art of reading the actual words. That teacher is now a headmistress FFS