Originally Posted by Bostonian
Originally Posted by Iucounu
I felt so much like "that parent", but I'd had enough. I told DS to always be careful to get the right answer, and not to ever change his answer when a teacher at his school told him differently. I finally told him that the way they approach math learning at his school and in the district is deeply flawed, though he's not to repeat that to anyone there, and that I'm doing my best to solve that problem for him.
Every person, and therefore every teacher, has his quirks. One reason I would be reluctant to homeschool is that being exposed to a variety of adults, each with different expectations, is good preparation for college and the workplace, where the quirks of professors and bosses will need to be handled. If the teacher wants "20 miles" when she asks "how many miles", I'd tell him to answer "20 miles".

Schooling is not just about learning but about credentialing (and day care/warehousing). Having an interesting and well-paying job in the future may require some conformism during the school years.
I disagree. That sort of conformism, to the quirks of a teacher who demands wrong answers and is stubborn when shown to be wrong, isn't necessary in order to get an interesting and well-paying job. It may be necessary to safeguard a perfect grade point average at all times, but I'd still rather at this stage that my son prize correctness and attention to detail over that sort of thing. He can decide later how he wants to address the situation when points actually matter to his long-term GPA. I can't teach him to bow to the petty whims of people who should know better, just because of some small measure of power they hold to harm one, but I can teach him to be polite but assertive and to follow up on all opportunities to demonstrate that he's right.

The way I solved that problem in the workplace is by finding positions where my skills and attention to detail were prized. I wouldn't put up for long with a boss insisting on being indisputably wrong, and demanding that I buy into it, just like I wouldn't put up with being undervalued in general.

I did get a B instead of a deserved A in one class in law school because of this insistence on correctness. My first evidence professor was just the sort of person who shouldn't be teaching anything to anyone: who can't admit when he or she is wrong, yet is wrong a lot of the time. Proving beyond dispute that I'd been incorrectly docked points on a major question on one exam finally resulted in a curt statement that my job was "not to learn the law, but to learn what he wanted in an answer, just like in real life". That's garbage, of course-- it might apply to salespeople, but not to a field where rightness fundamentally matters, and where some things are not debatable.

All that said, I tend to agree with you that learning to deal with teachers and the rules of a school is beneficial, and is a lack in homeschooling. I just don't agree with easily conforming to unreasonable behavior. Sometimes right is just right, and teachers especially ought to realize that.

At the university where my wife teaches, there's an appeals process that a student can invoke who feels that an incorrect grade has been given. Maybe I'd better shop around for such a feature when school hunting with DS. He's as much of a stickler as me.

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