not about food

A colleague of mine came to see me today about something that made her wince.

It seems that the 12 year old daughter of one of the clerks in her department came to the office on "take your daughter to work day". The girl then went back to school and wrote a very sweet essay about her experience and received an A+ on it, complete with a nice remark from the teacher. The mom was so proud, she showed the essay to my colleague today.

But this A+ was on a paper that was filled (my colleague repeated the word twice) with spelling and grammatical errors and incomplete or run-on sentences.

My colleague was astonished that any teacher would give this paper an A+. She offered that it might have been wise for the teacher to tell the child that the content of the paper was A+, but that she needed to fix the sentences and spelling in order to receive the A+.

She said that the teacher was doing a disservice to this child. When will the child begin to write and spell properly if not in 6th grade?

This is a case of LIBERALISM GONE WRONG!

It was very upsetting to me that this is allowed in inner city schools. Teachers think that they are shoring up the self esteem of kids by giving them good grades (and that is another story entirely-grades are a problem in and of themselves). But does this really boost their self esteem?

Do you know what boosts self esteem? Meeting a challenge. Being given something to do and getting it done. Knowing that you can meet expectations. Doing something hard. This is what boosts self esteem. Not being lied to.

Any thoughts?