Kennigit
proud 2 boxer
just all around pointless weekend. I really squandered it, and this was coming off a not great week
Random Rants ': No, YOUR thread titles suck!
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Zkribbler
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It is extreme. Assuming for the sake of argument that the teacher did something wrong, there's no need to immediately jump to termination. There's intermediate steps: verbal warning, written warning, suspension. Why, in the midst of a nationwide teacher shortage would you want to precipitously fire someone over something so trivial
"Shaming" comes from ridiculing someone in front of other. This is a private note, which would have remained private but for it being posted on the internet by the parents.
The teacher was not undermining the authority of the parents; rather, the parents were undermining the authority of the teacher, whose job it is to teach.
What the parents taught the girl was indeed wrong. Note that the "l" and the "s" are the same height and that the ending strokes of the "s" bisect the letter rather than being placed near the bottom of the letter.
It's also interesting to note that the parents reaction to seeing that their child has repeatedly ignored the teacher's instruction is not to either (a) contact the teacher and work things out or (b) reprimand their child for being disobedient in school, but rather they take the dispute to the internet in an attempt to shame the teacher.
BTW: I still remember when my teacher taught us how to make 8's. She demonstrated how to do it in one curvy line. The kid next to me grumbled under his breath, "Teacher, you don't know how to do it," and defiantly drew a big circle with a little circle on top of it.
If you actually read the article you'd see the reason for the reprimand wasn't that the child wasn't writing in cursive correctly, but the fact that she was writing in cursive at all. School isn't the military where teachers have absolute authority and every order they bark is to be followed to the letter. Teachers should have very limited authority over the children they teach and that authority should only extend to maintaining order in the classroom. How exactly was this girl writing in cursive a disruption to the class? I'll tell you: It wasn't. This teacher just has some personal issue with cursive (probably never learned to read it) and instead of congratulating the child for having any level of proficiency in a skill most other 7-year-olds do not have, decided to berate the child and make her feel like she did something wrong when she didn't.
Which brings me to another point: teachers/professors need to stop being so darn full of themselves. They need to learn to just teach the material they are supposed to teach and stop trying to be the next Louanne Johnson.
And the parents didn't reprimand their child because the teacher's ignored instruction was absolutely superfluous to the child's education and getting her to stop writing in cursive was more likely for the teacher's benefit than the child's. Which is another reason this teacher should be fired. This teacher obviously has a very selfish mindset if he/she did this to make their own job easier. Teaching is supposed to be about making learning easier for the students to grasp, not making teaching the material easier on the teachers. So if the problem was that the teacher couldn't read cursive, then the correct course of action for that teacher should be to learn pretty damn quick how to read cursive, not berate, shame, and threaten a child and undermine the authority of her parents.
And how was the authority of her parents undermined? Her mother is the one that taught her how to write in cursive, so for the teacher to try to get her to stop writing in cursive, thus causing the skill to atrophy over time, this teacher is trying to undo what her parents taught her. Which is yet another reason this teacher should be fired. Teachers have a hard enough time getting parents to even take an interest in their children's education, and this moron is alienating parents who obviously care about their child's education by saying what they are teaching their child is wrong. Life lesson: you will never be able to convince a parent they are wrong in matters regarding their own children and trying to do so will only make them angrier. Teachers have to learn tact and how to have a deft touch in matters like this. This teacher does not have that touch which, yet again, is another reason this teacher should be fired.
The parents also did not undermine the authority of the teacher, because the teacher overstepped his/her bounds and thus had no authority to undermine. You seem to operate on the belief that the teacher should be the omnipotent lord and master of their classroom. That is not the way it should be. Teacher's should only be granted the absolute bare minimum of authority over their students. Their job is to teach, not police. That's what school administration is there for. I also find it more than a little disturbing that you seem to imply that suspension would be a reasonable punishment if this child continues to write her name in cursive. If the school did suspend her for that, I would hope the parents would sue the school, as they would probably have a decent shot at winning. Which, by the way, threatening lawsuits is a really good way to bully schools into compliance and put them back in their place. Especially if you can get other parents to rally around you so the school has to deal with an angry mob instead of just one miffed parent.
Also, what is this teacher shortage you are talking about? My brother got his teaching license 10 years ago and hasn't been able to find a steady teaching job because every school district in this area says they are full up on teaching positions. So, at least in my area, it seems like we could definitely afford to axe quite a few teachers for the slightest missteps.
One final note: It's crap like this story that makes people vote against school levies for public schools. Quite frankly, people are petty and don't give a wooden nickel about the greater good or whether or not they're right or wrong. So go ahead teachers, make your brave stand against us ignorant, know-nothing parents. Just remember, we are the ones who vote for your school's funding. Piss us off and we'll snatch your job right out from under you without hesitation. But hey, at least you stuck to your principles, right?
Would the teacher be able to read any written warnings? I guess they'd better be typed or printed, since she's so averse to cursive. I wonder what she does when she's told to sign something.
So one person being reprimanded by another can never feel, or be manipulated to feel shame?
The parents are smart enough to understand that cursive writing is a necessary skill, and made the effort to teach their child to acquire it.
As for the letters not being perfectly formed, I will ask if you had perfect handwriting at age 7. I certainly didn't. As I related above, I missed out on some of the formal instruction in cursive writing, and had to get extra help from my father. For a 7-year-old, she didn't do too badly. I've seen college students whose writing isn't any better.
Unless it's the policy of the school board in that school's area to ensure that 7-year-old students are not taught cursive writing, this teacher missed a golden opportunity. Instead of trying to stifle this girl's attempts to use cursive, the teacher should have tried to help her improve her writing. I can't fathom why cursive isn't part of the curriculum for this age group. I also can't fathom why a teacher wouldn't be pleased to see a child using, or at least attempting, advanced concepts.
How do we know the parents haven't tried to work this out with the teacher and this is the last straw?
Zkribbler
Deity
Try Los Angeles. New teachers last an average of three years before burning out and quitting. Too many kids. Too many hours. Low pay. No respect. No support from the parents.
Zkribbler
Deity
Upon further reflection, I agree with you.
Zkribbler
Deity
Talk to your brother about what a teacher's duties are.
Old Hippy
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the most astounding thing about the teacher is that they spelled their first word wrong and after scribbling it out had to start again... did they start in cursive
http://www.popsugar.com/moms/Little-Girl-Gets-Trouble-Writing-Cursive-38503998
http://www.popsugar.com/moms/Little-Girl-Gets-Trouble-Writing-Cursive-38503998
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Cursive writing is the worst
It was the girl's mother who taught her to write. I'd say that qualifies as parental support.
Or is it only considered "parental support" if the parents physically come to the school and do stuff?
Heh, it looks like the teacher did indeed start to write the word "stop" in cursive. But it looks like she's got sloppy writing, too.
Zkribbler
Deity
She taught her daughter poor penmanship. Is that parental support? She failed to remind her daughter to mind the teacher. Is that parental support? When the teach again reminded the daughter of past instructions, the parent attempted to shame the teacher by posting the admonition online. Is that parental support?
I'd say the mother is doing everything humanly possible to undermine support for the teacher. ;thumbsdown:
azzaman333
meh
When did this become the random essays thread.
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Sounds like a fun serial thread, if only for the fact it'd more or less render the rest of OT completely obsolete, reducing all communication done to be done via .gifs. Which...now that you think of it, I'm all in for that.
#makeOTGreatAgain
#makeOTGreatAgain
I'm going to ask you again: Was your own penmanship perfect when you were 7? Do kids that age do everything the same way that an adult would? Are their motor skills fully developed?
The answer to these questions is "no." (And if you swear your penmanship at age 7 was perfect, I won't believe you.)
The teacher should be ashamed of herself. It's ludicrous to berate a child for trying to write her name instead of printing it. It would be different if it were a legal paper where people are told where to print and where to write, or if it were a test paper that had to be filled in a certain way so it could be read by a computer. This was just a common work book that doesn't look any different from the sort of thing I used when I was that age... 45 years ago.
Preventing children from practicing writing is a way of keeping them only semi-literate. By not teaching cursive, and actually preventing kids from learning cursive, schools are deliberately fostering a generation of kids who will be unable to read handwritten documents, letters, messages, labels, and many other forms of written communications.
Personally, if I had a child in such a school, I'd pull the child out of there and either send him/her to a school that isn't so shortsighted, or I'd do homeschooling.
It's nonsensical to carry on about the "teacher's authority." If the teacher said smoking was okay for children, would you berate a student or parent who disagreed with that? If the teacher ordered the kids to recite prayers every morning and non-Christian kids refused, would you side with the teacher, claiming that it's more important to obey the teacher than be true to one's own conscience?
I've been through the latter situation, and thank goodness that nowadays Canadian kids have the Charter of Rights to back them up. It's illegal now for teachers in publicly-funded schools to force students to participate in religious rituals if they don't want to. It wasn't when I was in school, and even in my first year of college as a student teacher, I was ordered to participate in morning prayers along with the kids. One year later, and I'd have had the right to politely tell the regular teacher that I wouldn't be joining in that particular activity.
Is cursive used at all, other than in calligraphy? (and of course in your signature, but that is literally just two or three words and always the same)
I doubt i ever used it elsewhere, other than maybe some one-off assignment in elementary school.
I doubt i ever used it elsewhere, other than maybe some one-off assignment in elementary school.
Lohrenswald
世界的 bottom ranked physicist
Isn't cursive just how you write
(which is what the girl did in the paper)
I've mentioned elsewhere about how I prepare for my NaNoWriMo competitions. During the month prior to the contest's start, I do extensive outlines, notes, and literal character sketches. Some of the notes I make are printed, but most are written in cursive. After several instances of computer problems that have wiped out weeks' worth of work, I no longer rely on keeping everything in digital form.
I write every day, even if it's a couple of points about a story or character, or just my grocery list.
I abandoned writing by hand due to the fact that it takes one more time to write by hand than to type (if one is fast enough with the keyboard that is), so it would literally make it impossible for me to write my works as fast or as flowing as they are at the moment, since i would have to wait for my hand to finish writing the words which would have been already typed in the computer
Moreover there are the added conveniences of spellcheck and text formatting.
Let alone that my handwriting was never something to write (ehm) about
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