Ugh, what is wrong with schools today? A kid shows herself to be more advanced than the other students and instead getting the praise she deserves, she gets reprimanded and threatened.
http://www.popsugar.com/moms/Little-Girl-Gets-Trouble-Writing-Cursive-38503998
If you ask me this teacher needs to be fired immediately. That may sound extreme, but hear me out. This teacher reprimanding a 7-year-old student who clearly possesses an advanced skill for her age that her parents taught her has a lot of potentially damaging consequences. The two that immediately pop into mind is that this teacher is essentially shaming the child for being more advanced than her classmates and the teacher is undermining the authority of the child's parents by making the child think what her mother taught her is somehow "wrong" or "bad". Those two things alone should make this a fireable offense. In the face of contradictory instructions between parents and teachers, it should always be the teacher's authority that is undermined, never the parents' authority.
You've missed another possibility. Maybe the teacher herself can't read cursive. Computers and printers and photocopiers have been around long enough that it's possible for a younger teacher not to have had to learn cursive, or maybe she happily forgot it after becoming keyboard-dependent. I'm flabbergasted that some school systems no longer think it's necessary to teach cursive. They're deliberately turning out kids who are only partially literate.
I'm disgusted by the teacher's attitude that cursive writing merits punishment, and yes, I agree that firing is warranted - unless it's the policy of the school/school board that says "7-year-old students shalt not prove themselves literate by using cursive writing."
Cursive was mandatory when I was in school. The year I was 7, I was promoted to Grade 3 partway through the year - accelerated was the term used, for kids who either skipped a grade or did two in one year. I got to school one morning in February or so, and discovered my desk out in the hallway. Since that was reserved for kids who were being punished (worst punishment next to the strap), I was distraught, wondering what I'd done, and what 3 other kids had done (since there were 3 other desks besides). Then the teacher showed up, our desks were taken to a classroom at the opposite end of the hall (Grades 1-4 were all in the same long hallway) and we were told to go in and sit down. Partway through the morning, my new teacher told me, "You're in Grade 3 now."
How this relates to 7-year-olds and cursive writing is this: In Grade 2, we were taught cursive writing. Or at least for me, it was a start in learning cursive writing. At the time of my promotion, we hadn't covered all of what the Grade 2 kids were supposed to learn, and of course the Grade 3 kids already knew this stuff. So my first day in Grade 3 was confusing, because the teacher wrote stuff on the blackboard that we had to copy in our scribblers, and I couldn't make out some of it - it was material that I would have learned within the next month or so in my original class. So I had a lot of catching up to do in a hurry, and thank goodness for my dad being patient and not laughing at me for not knowing how to make certain letters and how to join them. He taught me what I needed to know to catch up to the other kids.
In the face of contradictory instructions between parents and teachers, it should always be the teacher's authority that is undermined, never the parents' authority.
I can think of instances in which I'd disagree with this, but that's another thread.
Sorry for not using the quote function but I just had a couple of small points.
There's actually bonanza fan fiction? Wow, that is dated.
Two, how hot does it get in Canada in the summer? Here it's been above 40 most days, sometimes as much as 45. In Baghdad it's even worse. We have AC most places but power cuts are really common. Fortunately my apartment complex and workplace have good generators but a lot of places like public schools don't.
1. Yes, there's
Bonanza fan fiction. This isn't the only site. Someone on a Pernell Roberts YouTube page (he's the one who played Adam, and he was a pretty decent singer as well) gave me links to a couple of other sites.
It's not dated, when you consider that I'm old enough to have watched the show in its original run. Not the episodes from the '50s, of course, but the mid/late '60s and on. I found a site that has years' worth of episodes, so I've been happily binge-watching them, and the better fanfic is icing on the cake.
2. It can get up to 40C here sometimes. A few years ago I moved into a basement apartment during the hottest September I can recall in decades (last vacancy I could find that was both affordable and accepted cats). The temperatures were still in the high 20 to low/mid 30C and my windows faced west... the place was unbearable most of the day and didn't cool off enough to sleep until the wee hours. So I'd leave food and water for the cats, and take myself off to the closest mall that had air conditioning. I don't have AC or even a fan, so summers are really not my favorite time of year. My comfort zone ends around 20C at the most. Anything more than that is too warm.
Thankfully we're now in a different place - still facing west, and yes, it sometimes gets uncomfortably warm here. But the ventilation is much better, and it's rained a lot this summer so things haven't been that bad.
![[pissed]](/images/smilies/pissed.gif "Pissed [pissed]")
