It doesn't impress me and it won't impress the examiners

On Friday the conference of the National Association of Head Teachers heard calls for compulsory parenting classes for all. As the Scotsman reported:

Delegates also condemned Kelly’s promises to give parents more “power” over their children’s education, demanding that the focus should be on parental responsibility instead.

David Gray, head teacher at Babbacombe Primary School in Torbay, Devon, called for compulsory parenting classes for new mothers.

He said local authorities should set up “weekly sessions which mothers and babies from all social levels would be expected to attend”.

“The parents could be taught the importance of a regular routine for their baby, the importance of teaching the child the difference between ’yes’ and ’no’ and the necessity of playing with and talking to one’s baby.”

Then yesterday, says the Guardian:

An education minister was booed and jeered by headteachers yesterday after insisting that no new money would be offered to help fund a government plan to give teachers guaranteed time out of the classroom for marking and preparation.

And:

Baroness Margaret Sharp, of the Liberal Democrats, was also booed after she urged headteachers to "think creatively" to help stretch their budgets.

Teachers are at the sharp end of our society's difficulties with authority, but can these heads not see how ludicrous this sort of behaviour makes them look?

For years the conferences of the teachers' unions have kept us entertained at Easter. Then we can listen to figures who have been in cryogenic suspension since the 1970s. Beyond persuading a few more parents that it is worth the sacrifices to educate their children privately, they probably do little harm.

The teachers' problem is that, while other professions choose experienced and impressive figures to speak on their behalf, they insist upon choosing the callow and irresponsible. The result is that they sound like permanent adolescents.

They demand authority over parents, while sounding outraged if anyone tries to exert authority over them. Many would support a state monopoly of education, yet they hate it when the state tries to reform the system.

It is tempting to see teachers' current disaffection as the fault of the Blair government. Certainly, the Liberal Democrats have been courting them assiduously. But the truth is that teachers have always been like that.

They were permanently disaffected under the Thatcher and Major, before that the saintly Shirley Williams was widely hated by teachers, and back in the 1960s I regularly got days off primary school as the young men with beards who taught us went on strike.

Now heads seem to be going the same way. If their behaviour does not cause bad behaviour in their pupils, then it is at least a symptom of the same disease.