PTA observation class

Yesterday was the first PTA afternoon for the year. It is always the same... first you go and observe the class doing their normal lessons, next you go to the gymnasium and listen to reports from the PTA committee etc. where you clap in the correct places to show your approval (no one has ever disapproved in the history of PTAs here) and then you shuffle back to your child's classroom for a meeting with the other parents and teachers about how things are going in the class. Now that I have two children in the same school the shuffling is increased between the two classes, but the information is basically the same in both. The teacher asks if anyone has any questions etc. and despite everyone having moaned about things while they should have been listening to the meeting in the gym they all smile and say "no" - well actually they don't even say no, they just look at their shoes. Then of course the "foreign" Mum asks some questions which are answered with suckings of air and tilts of the head and nothing really changes.
My son's new class was.... an absolute disaster, but I am kind of used to that with first grade classes here. It always seems to take a few months to whip the kids into action - one of the goals of the teacher was to "stop the children getting up and wandering randomly around the room during the lessons". Here's hoping she can get that one sorted pretty fast! My biggest worry is that even though the desks and chairs here are adjustable, they never bother to adjust them according to the children's height. As most of you know both my children are tall (to put it mildly) and therefore the smallest size that they start the desks at just doesn't work! I asked the teacher very nicely if she could do it as soon as possible - pointing out my husband's incredibly bent back (apparently the result of having desks that didn't suit at school... he is 190cm tall) and she promised to have the desks adjusted on Monday. I remember doing the same with my daughter in first and second grade too.... perhaps things just don't sink in here!
My daughter's class was very refreshing in some ways - at least the children could sit still for most of the lesson - even if their responses etc. were controlled so much that they could probably be replaced with robots. I guess parents are critical all around the world, but sometimes having a completely different education system to compare things too makes the grass on the other side look very green!