DH and I always took the attitude that "part of life is learning to get along with bad teachers, bosses, etc., so our son will just have to deal"...until we got a doozy of a teacher. At that point, DH and I changed our tune.
Yes, we all have to learn to get along with people who aren't ideal. But as adults, we are much better able to cope with these sorts of people. We have had time to develop the skill set needed. And we can choose to leave a job with a bad boss if the situation is intolerable. Children have no such options with a bad teacher. They are so much more at the mercy of the situation than an adult would be.
Ultimately, one of the main reasons we pulled DS out of public school was because the teacher was so difficult to deal with, and we felt that given where DS was in his development, it was doing actual harm to him to stay there. She was destroying his sense of self. I believe her actions were actually interfering with his ability to develop those very coping skills we wanted him to have. An insecure, unhappy child being made to doubt himself does not cope well and does NOT learn anything useful, and we realized that we were not usng any child-rearing logic whatsoever in our buying into the expectation that this would be a learning situation for him. It was just bad.
I'm not saying that was the case for your son, doodlebug. In our case, DS at the time did NOT have anything nice to say about school or his teacher or, frankly, his life. Not even a passive "It's fine." He acted out for the first time in his life. He was angry and frustrated and sad. It was OBVIOUS that he was getting NOTHING positive out of the experience. His coping skills visibly deteriorated. No question about it for us.
Now, it doesn't sound like you were in that same situation, and I'm certainly not trying to make you second-guess your year here. But I want to give you another point of view because I'm now a much greater protectionist for my child.
Ultimately, I no longer buy into the "getting along with rotten bosses is a lesson we all must learn in school." I think there's a time when we all must learn that, but I don't think elementary school is that time. Obviously there's a spectrum of teachers running from fabulous to abusive, and we have to be reasonable about our expectations. Not all will be the best teacher ever. But I think that the classroom teacher HAS to be closer to the good end to the bad for our kids. I think that must be a requirement. I'm not a helicopter parent, but when it comes to teachers, I've come to the conclusion that even one near the middle is pretty much unacceptable to me anymore. I just saw the amount of damage done to my child in a short time, and I think no good comes of that, no lesson is actually learned from that. The child is just destroyed.
FWIW...
