I have an aunt and an uncle and several extended family members who are or were teachers. So I get the burnout stories too.

Urchling's kindergarten teacher nearly quit after her first year.

The school placed kids on classes randomly, and did not allow replacements either at parents' or teachers' requests. The computer draw did not have any kind of checks and balances to it. Randomly, it placed 16 kids who were DCS (Dept of Children's Services, so abused, neglected, extreme poverty, dysfunction, incarceration, foster soets of situations) in her class. Out of the entire kindergarten for that year....avg 30 kids per class and I think there were 4 classes, not sure what the avg # of DCS kids per year, but she had a disproportionate number of hard case kids. 13% of the entire student body for that grade was hard case kids in her classroom.

Because the computer said so.

And they (the administration) knew, well before the school year started. But they wouldn't reshuffle or move kids to balance them out across the grade better.

This is a disservice to the teachers, obviously, but it's a disservice to ALL the children too. The ones who need a little extra, and the ones who lose our because of the inevitable overwhelm.

One little girl would habitually crawl under the desks and cut the shoestrings of the other kids. Or hair. Domestic Violence and maybe (?) child abuse. Never really knew. The child lived in terror and that was her coping mechanism. I knew she was thin and often unkempt and too too pale.

There are a lot of parents failing their kids. But so is the school system, so is the government, so are religious institutions, so is the community.

And umtinately, a society that fails parents will create parents that fail children. We are not super heroes or magical beings. Parents need societal and governmental support.

Does anyone honestly believe that all parents are getting that support equitably and with honor and integrity?

I don't. And I've successfully raised a kid in this society.

I can tell you my biggest successes were where I broke rank according to society's standards, narrative, and expectations.

I pulled Urchling out of school and we homeschooled two years after the album incident. We'd both had enough.