Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Tough love anyone?

By the time they get to 4th or 5th grade, children should slowly start building skills to interact with adults who may not be all sweet and loving without being stressed out. So I'm not 100% against tough love.

That being said, if I had a choice as in if I'm paying for someone to be DD's teacher, I'd avoid someone like Mr. K and find someone else who knows how to teach without resorting to humiliation and intimidation.

DD loves her ballet school but I'm taking her out and putting her into a different one. Her old school is THE ballet school in our state and has produced many stars but aside from the fact that I don't see that in her future (ballet is not her area of talent), the director of the school who teaches older students is exactly like Mr. K and I don't believe in that teaching style, not enough to pay for it anyway.

DD's new school's director is one of those 100% positive energy people but she is strict, firm, and demanding too and she takes her students to the next level not through fear but through respect. The atmosphere of her class is calm, serene, and supportive. To me, it's a lot more important that DD is in a nurturing environment than learning as fast as she could because she is walking on egg shells.

Perfectly stated.

Communication and expectations are KEY components of this method.

Being abusive is not.

I absolutely agree with the part about rote learning. I know you guys call it "drill and kill", but it boggles my mind that the prevailing sentiment is against memorization of basic math facts. We learned our multiplication tables up to 12 when I was a kid, and it's mostly all still in my head -- there are a few rogue ones I have to think about, these days, but that's old age for you. It isn't doing kids any favor to skip that step on the way to higher learning.

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With arithmetic I think it is the only way for sure if automatic recall is desired. Ditto with declension of verbs. The desired state is not 'mastery' as much as 'reflex'.

Where I have the problem is with teachers insisting on 'showing work' for self evident facts in arithmetic. All I cared about with my DD was whether or not the answer to an arithmetic problem was correct, at first. Later, I wanted her to understand different strategies for simplifying calculations but that would not have been possible without an underlying mastery of the 'rules of arithmetic' to start with.

I agree with the general sentiment here, which is that the author makes some good points, and supports them badly.

I'd like to call out an issue with his reference to rote memorization and how Asian nations approach education, because in my experience, they're getting it wrong to the other extreme. Overexposure to rote memorization leads to automatons who can remember to do steps 1-7 when X occurs, but have no idea what to do when X+1 occurs. Memorization and drill-and-kill has its place, but so do analysis, critical thinking, and applied knowledge. My professional encounters with Asian-educated workers strongly suggest a general lack of the latter.

Also, I dispute the idea that "strict is better than nice," Refusing to accept less than a student is capable of is not being mean, and accepting less than they're capable of is not being nice, because you're not doing them any favors. That said, there are other ways to get your point across than being verbally abusive and poking kids with a pencil. Rather than, "Who eez deaf in first violins!?", the instructor could simply say, "Someone in first violins is out of tune." I had a vocal music teacher who got it right... he expected perfection, he made us practice until we got it right (and refused to perform a piece of music that wasn't), and he would point out any mistakes... WITHOUT calling out individuals, being verbally abusive, or poking anyone. The group was heavily booked during the holiday season, and made a lot of money. And if he died today, there would be a chorus to sing at his funeral that could drown out Mr. K's symphony orchestra.

The best teachers mix high standards and corrective feedback with appropriate praise and a genuine personal connection with their students.

Which leads me to "praise makes you weak." How on earth are children expected to develop resilience and confidence if they don't internalize a message that they have the abilities they need to succeed? And where will they get this confidence unless they get external validation? As I said, though, the praise needs to be appropriate.

Yes. This.


And sometimes-- in fact, I'd argue more often than not-- we lack the maturity or self-awareness at the time to fully appreciate such teachers. They don't necessarily cultivate warm and fuzzy feelings from students, and most of them could care less about popularity.

We do work harder for them, learn more, and grow in ways that would have been impossible without their influence, but they may not provide us with a lot of "feel-good" moments IN the moment, if you see what I mean. In fact, my experiences in higher ed indicate that most such educators are viewed with a certain amount of dread and resentment because of the TIME they demand of students.

I can count a handful of such teachers in my life. I'm grateful beyond words to each and every one of them, including the one in college that reached the end of a rather long fuse with my slacker attitude... and tore into me rather assertively. With another student, it would have been "abusive." I blush a little even now, recalling that moment and feeling ashamed. For me, it was... a teachable moment. I didn't ENJOY it, but I needed to hear that message, and I needed it to be unvarnished. This professor knew that about me and delivered. Total home-run.