Two weeks into the school year, nearly 40 letters reporting teachers were sitting in the inbox of an elementary school complaints officer. At the same school, getting four or five in an entire year had once been considered alarming.
The people who wrote them probably never imagined that an offhand question of theirs would become a trending topic. “Do teachers really have to have children? Can you guarantee that new teachers won’t get pregnant?” The homeroom teacher went on maternity leave, and the school assigned someone else to the class. Parents’ anxiety followed their children’s slipping grades and eventually landed on childbirth. That same complaints officer had also received more everyday reports. The school had students take turns cleaning the toilets as part of its hands-on education program. One parent didn’t speak to the teacher, but wrote in directly: Why should children this young have to do dirty, exhausting work? Can’t the teacher do it? Is there no money to hire a cleaner?
A little farther north, Zou Hua, who had been teaching for 27 years, was told by his principal that someone had filed a report under their real name, accusing him of not paying enough attention to a child. He thought for a long time before connecting it to something that had happened about two years earlier. A shy boy in his class was afraid to raise his hand and ask to use the toilet. He couldn’t hold it and wet his pants. His parents never said a word to him about it; they took the child straight to the education bureau.
The school has nearly 6,000 students and more than 90 classes. Chen Yu used to stand at the front of a classroom; now, every day in the office, he helps his colleagues sort through these letters. A staff member at an education bureau in the Yangtze River Delta said the complaints hotline was originally meant to be a last resort, used only when there was no other option. Now, it seems to be getting abused. Their investigations found that most reports against teachers were clearly exaggerated or untrue.
I don’t know how many of those 40 letters came from children who had genuinely been wronged. Publicly available information doesn’t break it down; all we can see are the conclusions reached after the education bureau’s investigations. One question also remains unanswered: Why don’t parents first walk into the office? Some parents put it bluntly: they’re afraid their child will be singled out, and that teachers of different subjects will hold it against them. Talking face-to-face has become a risk, so writing a letter feels like the only way out. Once this cycle gets going, neither side can get out of it.
My view is that this isn’t the fault of one bizarre parent. The cost of filing a complaint has been driven close to zero, while the entire burden of investigating it falls on the other side. Any system that works this way will eventually be flooded with reports. The crypto world knows this mechanism well. In a DAO, anyone can put forward a proposal, while opponents have to provide evidence point by point. On content platforms, the report button is always more prominent than the customer-service chat window. Human nature is the same everywhere: make a button cheap to press, and people will press it every day.
The cost to teachers is real. Write an explanation, apologize, change roles—once the whole process is over, they may still be standing at the front of the classroom. Only they know whether their hearts have grown cold. This will be over only when writing a complaint becomes something that takes courage again.
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The people who wrote them probably never imagined that an offhand question of theirs would become a trending topic. “Do teachers really have to have children? Can you guarantee that new teachers won’t get pregnant?” The homeroom teacher went on maternity leave, and the school assigned someone else to the class. Parents’ anxiety followed their children’s slipping grades and eventually landed on childbirth. That same complaints officer had also received more everyday reports. The school had students take turns cleaning the toilets as part of its hands-on education program. One parent didn’t speak to the teacher, but wrote in directly: Why should children this young have to do dirty, exhausting work? Can’t the teacher do it? Is there no money to hire a cleaner?
A little farther north, Zou Hua, who had been teaching for 27 years, was told by his principal that someone had filed a report under their real name, accusing him of not paying enough attention to a child. He thought for a long time before connecting it to something that had happened about two years earlier. A shy boy in his class was afraid to raise his hand and ask to use the toilet. He couldn’t hold it and wet his pants. His parents never said a word to him about it; they took the child straight to the education bureau.
The school has nearly 6,000 students and more than 90 classes. Chen Yu used to stand at the front of a classroom; now, every day in the office, he helps his colleagues sort through these letters. A staff member at an education bureau in the Yangtze River Delta said the complaints hotline was originally meant to be a last resort, used only when there was no other option. Now, it seems to be getting abused. Their investigations found that most reports against teachers were clearly exaggerated or untrue.
I don’t know how many of those 40 letters came from children who had genuinely been wronged. Publicly available information doesn’t break it down; all we can see are the conclusions reached after the education bureau’s investigations. One question also remains unanswered: Why don’t parents first walk into the office? Some parents put it bluntly: they’re afraid their child will be singled out, and that teachers of different subjects will hold it against them. Talking face-to-face has become a risk, so writing a letter feels like the only way out. Once this cycle gets going, neither side can get out of it.
My view is that this isn’t the fault of one bizarre parent. The cost of filing a complaint has been driven close to zero, while the entire burden of investigating it falls on the other side. Any system that works this way will eventually be flooded with reports. The crypto world knows this mechanism well. In a DAO, anyone can put forward a proposal, while opponents have to provide evidence point by point. On content platforms, the report button is always more prominent than the customer-service chat window. Human nature is the same everywhere: make a button cheap to press, and people will press it every day.
The cost to teachers is real. Write an explanation, apologize, change roles—once the whole process is over, they may still be standing at the front of the classroom. Only they know whether their hearts have grown cold. This will be over only when writing a complaint becomes something that takes courage again.
Follow me for more digging.
$BTC $ETH $BNB
#教育 #教师 #家校关系 #Trending