They don’t like each other. They don’t talk. They sit too far apart. He is sulky and aggressive. She is withdrawn and frightened. This is his first parents’ evening. She’s been here once before. He gazes anywhere but me. She looks at the floor. His face is smudged by alcohol. Her face is smudged by lipstick. He’s got a livid tattoo of a spider crawling from his neck. There’s booze on his breath.
Their daughter, Geena, is in my 9th year. She was going to sit with us, but ran away.
“My parents are shit, sir. Hate my dad.”
Geena is bright, but she’s doing badly. She’s starting to bunk. She’s been caught by the cops with cider and skunk under the Westway with some older, errant boys.
This has only one ending. Always.
She’s been put on “Behaviour Zone Red”. Next thing will be expulsion. They get kicked out fast these days. If it’s not nipped now, she’s had it. A crying shame.
He hates schools. He yells at his wife. Something is her “fucking fault”.
I used to have empathy for couples like this. No more. None.
I know that your existence is a grim struggle, that the wounds have been going on for generations, that your life is an alcoholic haze, that yours is a relentless migraine, that there’s not much money and much less love, and that there but for fortune go we all.
I know. It’s all a tragedy, but I’m not from Relate. I don’t care anymore. All I care about is Geena.
I’m her teacher, not your social worker. He starts to read his daughter’s report.
“Why don’t he teach her nuffin’ then?”
Shall I just deck him?
Have you ever told her a bedtime story? Or listened to her read one? Why did you not attend the infants’ pantomime? She was Tinkerbell in Peter Pan. She was lovely. Or watched her dance in our West Side Story? Beautiful. Why not? Why don’t you ask her about her homework? Sit with her? Congratulate her? Why did you not answer our letters? What’s your excuse?
Why are you such rubbish parents?
Am I being unfair? Brutal? I don’t care. Geena has one last chance, if that. Have you noticed that she shakes all the time? Do you know how unhappy she is? Why have you not been her witnesses? Why have you not been kinder?
She starts to whimper. He regards me with louche contempt. He probably hated school and mutters “fucking teachers”.
There is only one ending to this. Always.
Bad parenting should be crime. I can’t forgive it anymore.
This is what I’m really thinking.
“Good evening, Mr Simpson...”
- Ian Whitwham is a former inner city London teacher.