Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Questioning teacher???

Anyone have issues where there child questions the teacher?

My DS7 was marked wrong on a spelling test for spelling barbecue she corrected it as barbeque
I looked it up and seems you can spell it either way

And he a science question was which planet is most similar to Earth he feels the answer is Venus not Mars

I am not sure which is correct.

In the Merriam-Webster's dictionary entry, "barbecue" is the preferred spelling and "barbeque" is the variant. Your son is more correct according to MW, which is the official dictionary of the Spelling Bee. So there. ;-)

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/barbeque

This is tricky territory. One one hand, you would like your child to treat the teachers with respect. On the other hand, most adults feel that questioning them is disrespectful. I think in elementary school it's best not to get involved in an 'but I'm right' battle with a teacher. After all, a few points off here and there aren't going to matter at this stage.

What about the larger issues - fairness, truth, Adults not getting to have their way 'just because they are adults?'

I think it's ok to say that inside each classroom, the teacher has to make 1000 decisions, and that their decisions are final if you are under age 12. You can say that most 7 year olds don't realize that there can be more than one answer, so teachers of 7 year olds don't usually have a procedure in place for dealing comfortably with students who correct them.

Just like I told my 7 year old that they are 'too young' for kissing, but that I would certianly tell him all that he needed to know when he was older, I think it's ok to tell a child that they are too young to challenge a teacher, and that in due time you will provide all the needed training.

I really think that a child gets more benifit from learning frustration tolerance than they do from assertiveness training in this situation during the elementary school years. If your child is particularly meek and respectful, then the situation might be different, by mine is bossy and critical by nature, and doesn't need any encouragement.

I do think that when the time comes, it's good to teach children the rules of the situation -
1) request a private meeting, do not start in unless no one can over hear.
2) start with a feeling statement. "I feel sad when ________ because _________"
as in, "I feel sad when I see my answer marked wrong, because I looked up my answer in the dictionary and I wrote down what it said." Shows paper. or 'I feel sad when I see my answer marked wrong because I looked up the Mars is closer is size, chemical composition, and year-length.
3) Get ready to listen, and listen.
4) One is only allowed to bring up any particular question once. If the teacher doesn't agree, the matter must be dropped.

As you can see, a 7 year old might want to start training now to have all these pieces in place by the time they are 12. My experience is that even if a 7 year old had the EQ to do this perfectly, it just would not be well recieved by many Adults.

Best Wishes,
Grinity

LOL! That is funny.

Thank you Grinity. I did not have him bring it up to the teacher. I told him everybody makes mistakes even teachers.

He was frustrated and angry. I told him one word doesn't affect his grade.

Like you said questioning the teacher is tricky territory!
No teacher wants to hear they are wrong.

I think she would have his head on a platter if he said something!! She is an old fashioned strict teacher!

Right now I'm reading Temple Grandin's 'Animal's make us Human' and she is talking about how teaching the family dog 'frustration tolerance' - slowly and gently, makes for a happier dog and a happier family.

I would encourage you to praise very warmly every bit of flexibilty your son shows, or even if he handles his strong feeling of frustration and anger well.

I do know some teachers who are wonderfully confident and calm in the face of 'corrections' - I just figured that if this particular was one of those, your son would know that by now and it wouldn't be an issue.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

I have a really different perspective on this one. Our son has heard a lot of praise about from professors and mentors for his willingness to disagree or offer another opinion. Too often students have had this beaten out of them early and unfortunately it stifles them and makes them passive learners later.

So, my approach would be to instead talk about the difference between big and little problems or errors. If the teacher makes a simple spelling error on the board that isn't worth interrupting her and it will likely irritate her. Everybody makes lots of little mistakes and people who wait for others to make mistakes so they can jump on it are irritating to be around. If on the other hand it is a more major issue and you want to say something learn to do it in a noncritical way. That may mean raising your hand rather than blurting out. Phrasing your opinion politely in a noncritical way like "I may have misunderstood..." "Just to clarify..."

Those are good points. Disagreeing is def. beaten out of the kids in most cases. It is sad they are not encouraged to think. The more I think about it the more depressed I get. I hate thinking my DS7 is sitting there like a zombie all day.

I love this...... I would love to see a child say this and see the reaction LOL !

I may have misunderstood..." "Just to clarify..."

DS7 def needs frustration and anger tips! Oh boy one day in school he slammed the desk w/his hand , ripped a book and "displayed a mad face" Oh yeah what a day!

Well, I can certainly sympathise with him--I have quite a few of those instances stuck in my head from 20-30 years ago; I am a perfectionist, and I tend to expect other people to want to have things correct, too. But for what it's worth, the only one that I truly regret to this day is the one that I didn't speak up about.

In one case, I was taking the employment tests for Kelly services and was graded wrong on an answer which was right. I asked for a dictionary and showed them, and they would not correct it and even told me that my "combative" attitude would not serve me well as an employee. I told them that I hoped that people would prefer for me to write and type correctly for them.

In another case, I had a college class where the answer keys for tests fairly regularly had wrong answers, and when I challenged yet another one the professor told me he was tired of "carrying me" and refused to correct it. "Carrying me"--when I had a 4.0 gpa and was only questioning an answer that meant the difference between A and A- anyway. Silly me, I thought the point of classes was to learn things, and to that end it would be useful to have the right answers on the test keys. And that answer might make the difference for someone who needed that point, too.

But the one I still regret to this day is that I did not challenge a judge in a speech/debate tournament. She fell asleep during our round, and I still kick myself 25 years later for not walking out on her.

So yes, frustration tolerance is something, and I probably don't have enough of it to judge its merits. But it's also something to stand up for yourself and to stand up for what is right and to stand up for your education and insist that knowing the right answer is worth something and that knowing how to think and come up with another equally right answer is worth something too. It would probably also be useful to learn how to write sentences that don't take up the whole paragraph.

There is a great deal to be said, however, for learning the Japanese concept of "saving face", which is where that "perhaps I misunderstood" and "just to clarify" comes in. It never hurts to start a question with "I'm sorry,..." as in "I'm sorry, was it the size of the planet they were asking for, because I was thinking that the orbit and the atmosphere and the tilt of the axis (or whatever) were more similar in Venus...."

I say this all with the strongest conviction that my DS7 will never master any of it in a million years.