Reply to I can't handle the competition at K

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

Reply to "I can't handle the competition at K"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Well, the award was not given for academics.  But for being a good girl.  In the eyes of the teacher the good girl is the one that's best behaved and compliant. This is not the values that I'm teaching my DD. [b]I'm not raising sheep.[/b][/quote]

Neither am I. But ideally I am raising kids who will be appropriately behaved in a variety of different environments and obedient to legitimate authority when appropriate. Being a well behaved person/student is important and beneficial because learning cannot occur in an atmosphere of chaos, poor behavior, and disrespect. The rules in K are things like keep your hands to yourself, don’t interrupt when someone is talking, use polite words at an appropriate volume, pay attention to the teacher when she’s teaching, and do your work without distracting others. Are those really such bad things to learn, or bad rules to follow?

And I’m not sure what’s so objectionable about teaching kids a foundation of obedience to legitimate authority. Don’t (most) adults obey laws, follow instructions from their boss at work, take directions from the facilitator of classes they’re attending, follow the rules/policies of businesses and other public places, etc.? Otherwise we would end up with some sort of a state of anarchy. I think kids need to learn that there will be people in life who will give them instructions that need to be obeyed.

We teach our kids how to know whether someone is a legitimate authority figure. And we teach them that instructions from a legitimate authority figure are to be obeyed UNLESS they violate our family’s rules and/or values. Their teacher is an authority figure in their life, and so far nothing a teacher has told them to do has been sufficiently objectionable that we believe they would have been justified in disobeying.

Disobeying a bad/wrong rule can be a good thing after some consideration about why the rule is inappropriate; deciding to disobey or ignore all rules because “following rules is for sheep” (which seems like OP’s attitude) is defiance for the sake of defiance and no more virtuous or beneficial than the obedience OP seems to disdain.

Even Picasso, who I think was a pretty creative, interesting person and hardly a “sheep” had a quote something to the effect of (paraphrasing): you need to know the rules and be able to follow them before you can decide which ones you should break.

There are awards for lots of things in a child’s life. Academic success, academic effort, athletics. Why is it a bad thing if there’s some sort of "good citizenship" type award for politeness and following the rules of the classroom community that help create an environment conducive to learning? We had this when I was in school and I don't recall it being a big deal or controversial at all.

OP, your strong feelings about this (and against the other little girl) honestly kind of baffle me here. This award/club thing isn’t a big deal, and it doesn’t seem like some sort of slight against your daughter either. If the criteria of the award are things you don’t value, why in the world would you care about your daughter not receiving it? It sounds like your DD is a very smart and creative young girl who will have plenty of success in her life, so why begrudge recognition to another student who is successful in a different area that you don’t consider important? 
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics