POST-COVID Malaysia has seen greater parental involvement in children’s education. While well-intentioned, the rapid digitisation of education and convenience of platforms such as WhatsApp have also made it easier for parents to overstep teachers’ roles.
We have heard how our parents would punish us for being disciplined by a teacher. Today, some parents are likely to confront the teacher for disciplining their children. It is a gross generalisation but one that is not entirely without basis.
The stakes go beyond pride. When parents argue away a punishment or second-guess every decision a teacher makes, the lesson children absorb is that consequences are negotiable if someone advocates hard enough for them.
This extends beyond discipline. It can be as mundane as a teacher asking students to bring a box of clay for next week’s art class. Instead of listening and remembering, a child can simply rely on a parent to message the teacher later for the details. The child never had to pay attention in the first place.
This instinct to shield rather than hold accountable has found an official channel. In 2014, the Public Complaints Bureau under the Prime Minister’s Department introduced Sispaa, transforming how citizens lodge complaints against civil servants.
Before Sispaa, complainants had to navigate a decentralised, largely manual process just to be heard. Now, it takes only a few taps. I have used it myself to report an unhygienic restaurant, which was subsequently closed for inspection. It is proof that, when used well, Sispaa can hold those in power to account.
But that convenience comes at a cost when it comes to education. As the National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) recently warned, some parents have used Sispaa to lodge complaints against teachers over disciplinary actions, including the confiscation of mobile phones and vape devices.
NUTP cautioned that unreasonable complaints could weaken teachers’ willingness to enforce discipline and ultimately affect students’ character development. The problem, then, is not Sispaa itself but the use of accountability mechanisms to shield children from legitimate consequences.
Ultimately, perhaps the most damaging form of parental overreach is making excuses for children.
We must not pretend children and teenagers are incapable of thinking for themselves. Their cognitive development is still ongoing but they are capable of basic reasoning. Constantly shielding them from the consequences of their actions risks stunting their transition into responsible adults.
Take a child who habitually skips class. Rather than holding them to attend, a parent making excuses for them is an absurdity on its face.
It bears repeating: a teacher’s duty starts and stops at the school gate, for eight hours a day. Beyond that gate, it is the parent’s duty to ensure their child gets to school safely and to instil the discipline that keeps them there.
This is not to say every absence is negligence. Poverty, illness or other genuine hardships are not excuses; they are reasons and deserve to be treated as such. But an excuse offered simply to spare a child discomfort should be rejected. Education must not be compromised.
The duty to educate the nation’s future does not stop at school; it begins at home. Failure to make that distinction produces a generation raised to believe that consequences can always be argued, excused or complained away.
That lesson serves no one when university and the workplace demand the independent thinking that school was supposed to build. That preparation cannot begin the day the SPM certificate is handed out. It must begin now, at home, before the world stops making excuses for them.
Irham Zulkernain is a student at Universiti Teknologi Mara. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com