aleta,
>>Instead of being encouraged to continue the pursuit of his goal to have a
career in the film industry either in front of or behind the camera
(hopefully both) he was told in front of the entire class by one 5th
grade teacher, who had asked what the children wanted to do with their
lives, that he'd better pick something else because he had no talent.
A science teacher in the 4th grade told us that our son, who had made all
A's in science prior to her becoming his teacher, wasn't capable of A
work. She graded his papers in such a manner to insure that he had an
89 average each grading period.<<
That's truly frightening, but I can totally relate. You must have been in total disbelief after your extremely positive experience with his previous school.
"Over-educating" your son?! How pathetic. It just disturbs me no end to hear about situations such as yours. The sad thing is that I don't think our experiences are isolated incidences. For example, I don't want to turn this into a private school/home school vs. public school debate (you obviously had one very good public school experience) but, I don't recall hearing stories about kids in private education taking the violent route that we've heard about in the recent school yard killings. You have to ask yourself why. The kids in private school are just as exposed the the media and broad culture as the rest. So what is different? IMO, it has to be the freedom and flexibility of the individual private schools (I'm including homeschool in this) to institute rules and disciplinary measures on the students when they are appropriate.
For example, if my son had gone to his private school wearing clothes or symbols espousing Nazism, I would have gotten a phone call, been asked to meet with my son and the principle and I would have been told that unless he wore appropriate clothes, he would be expelled. Now imagine in the public school trying to tell a student that he can't "express" his political views with swastikas, etc. I can hear the ACLU now. I think this is a serious problem and I'm not quite sure how it will ultimately be resolved. Years ago school districts could put into place things like dress codes, (including things like no T-shirts with printed material on them), hair, tattoos, just about anything to do with the outward appearance of the students. In other words, the administrations were able to establish minimum "codes" and were able to use judgement and discretion in enforcing them. I'm afraid the "genie" is out of the bottle and that's why we hear these calls for swinging the pendulum back the other way, going to the extreme of uniforms, etc. I'm not against uniforms but I think it is sad that there seems to be no achievable middle ground.
BTW, did I say SHAME on LISD? They deserve it.
bp |
