A video went viral two weeks ago where a parent visited a school and assaulted a teacher. The report as obtained from a national newspaper saw an angry father slapping and punching the female teacher for beating his child without his consent. This is an assault too many in Nigeria and the time is now for all stakeholders around the children to nip it in the bud if we still desire civility and empathy from the present and the future generation because whatever they see their primary handlers do they do.
One of the best ways to handle this menace in our schools is to tackle it from the root cause through realistic data to work with but unfortunately, there is no currently empirical statistics that specifically addresses parental aggression in Nigerian schools as widely available as those from other countries, nonetheless there have been numerous reports and cases in point highlighting the growing concern around teachers’ assault in Nigerian schools.
Several media outlets have reported incidents where parents physically assaulted teachers for beating their children. For example, in Lagos, there have been high-profile cases of parents storming schools and attacking teachers over perceived mistreatment of their children.
On February 25, 2024, there was a case of a mother in a school in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, who beat up a teacher Favour Akide. In Ado Odo, Ogun State. Also on July 23, 2023, 10 secondary school teachers were arrested by police for allegedly beating up their teacher, Kolawole Sonuga, for stopping one of them from cheating in an examination
On January 20, 2022, a student who was prevented from attending classes because of his hairstyle, reportedly hired his mother and thugs to attack his teachers.
In 2019, a case of a parent attacking a teacher at a school in Ogun State went viral, raising national concerns about the safety of teachers.
Teachers’ experiences in this anomaly have been lately abysmal. They have always been at the mercy of their association and government for protection. As I have pointed earlier in this article, there isn’t a comprehensive survey and evidence from teacher unions and individual reports to indicate that verbal abuse and physical threats from parents are becoming more common, but from our national dailies, we have seen this is common in urban centers like Lagos, Abuja, Ibadan, Abeokuta and Port Harcourt. This is the reason why the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) has repeatedly called for greater protection for teachers against aggressive parents, citing concerns about their welfare and safety on the job.
I have in this piece, a few data to show that parental aggression in schools is a global concern as we have seen in many countries where parents pounce on teachers for punishing their wards for wrong behavior
In the US, a 2020 – 2021 study by the American Psychological Association (APA) found that nearly 30% of U.S. teachers reported incidents of parental harassment or intimidation related to student discipline. Teachers reported experiencing verbal or threatening violence from the student’s parent during the year in review. The data went further; verbal or threatening aggression from students was 80%. Physical violence from students was 56% at least once during the year. Physical violence from parents was 26%.
In the United Kingdom, a 2021 survey by the NASUWT (National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers) found that more than 50% of teachers had experienced aggression from parents, ranging from verbal abuse to physical threats.
This is not going to be a one-sided story as I will dwell on the causes of parental aggression in schools. In practice, a lot of factors have contributed to the increase in parental aggression in the world among which are; most parents seek continuously to want to have a say in school matters and the refusal of some schools in this respect has contributed to a growing trend of parental confrontations with school staff. School environment play key factor in the incessant parental aggression, when there is palpable school disorder in the administration of school policy on discipline, where there is no uniformity and equity in how schools administer their discipline policies this has led to parental aggression in many schools because inconsistencies breeds frustration. The affected parents may feel that their children are being unfairly treated or discriminated against, leading them to want to challenge the school’s authority more aggressively. When there is lack of clear, fair and consistent discipline policies, trust between parents and teachers are being eroded thus creating a heated environment
Regardless of these factors contributing to parental aggression in schools, in my concluding part in the next publication I shall be sharing on interventions parent coaches can deploy to curtail this increasing number of incidents where parents intervene violently when children are disciplined.
The purpose of this piece is to call on parent coaches to rise to the occasion since we are the primary caregiver and an agent of socialization to these children and a lot is expected from them to correct the anomaly.
