以前说有pushy parents（虎妈狼爸），现在又出现个新说法“snowplough parents”（扫雪机父母），就是parents clear all obstacles for children（为孩子清除一切障碍不让孩子输在跑线上的父母）。
St Paul女校校长攻击这类校长，说很多父母有怕孩子得不了第一的焦虑症。
Top head attacks pushy ‘snowplough’ parents
Clarissa Farr, head of St Paul’s Girls’ School in west London, said that many parents showed a “frenetic anxiety” and refused to accept their child coming second
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/11262228/Top-head-attacks-pushy-snowplough-parents.html
Parents of children attending Britain’s top fee paying schools are terrified how their children’s failure will reflect on themselves, one of the country’s top head teachers has said.
Clarissa Farr, head of St Paul’s Girls’ School in west London, also accused successful parents of “affluent neglect” - not paying their children enough attention in the evenings.
Mrs Farr said that many parents showed a “frenetic anxiety” and refused to accept their child coming second. She warned that children were growing up unable to cope with failure as a result, the Times reported.
“Their children will succeed above all and they’re not at all on board with the idea of school as a community, learning to come second or that learning to give ground is an important part of education,” she told a workshop at the Girls’ Schools Association conference this week.
Mrs Farr’s school charges up to £22,500 a year. Entry is by competitive examination and interview, and the school says it encourages high standards of achievement.
She said: “Parents have very high aspirations — they have a kind of ticking, frenetic anxiety — even the ones who are delightful to deal with are on edge because they haven’t really got enough time to have the conversation they’re trying to have with you.
“Anything that might result in success not happening for their son or daughter, in however small an arena, they’re very frightened of.”
Such “snowplough” parents cleared all obstacles from their children’s path and tried to boost their self-esteem at all costs, Mrs Farr added. Their children were left over-protected and unable to cope with failure.
Some parents saw school as a “bespoke, consumer service”. She said: “Again at the more extreme ends I’ve certainly noticed an increase in the expectation among parents that what is arranged for their daughter will be specific and bespoke. If she happens to speak a language that you don’t offer, it will be expected that you provide appropriate tuition. Something that shocked me quite a lot, and I’ve seen it more in the last few years, is the naked impatience with the idea of putting other people first that you see coming from parents. I think that’s a growing trend among city parents who have a sort of Darwinian attitude to their children’s education.”
This summer 57 per cent of A levels taken at St Paul’s Girls’ School were graded A*, as were 94 per cent of GCSEs, and 99 per cent of GCSEs were A* or A.
Mrs Farr’s comments come after Tristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary, attacked private schools for not doing enough to help state school pupils, and threatened to remove their business rate relief. He asked in an interview with The Times published on Saturday why private schools should be “subsidised” if they are “increasingly just taking rich foreigners and doing nothing to help children here”.
