To think our kids today are very soft !

[mountford100]

DD2 (14) has just come home from school crying and calling her English teacher 'MEAN' . This is because her English teacher has just compared a homework essay to what DD1 (17) Yr 12 was producing at (14 ) and is in her opinion not anywhere near the same level !

I can get where the teacher is coming from, DD 2 spent just 20 minutes on it, this obviously was evident when it was marked.
The teacher was trying to highlight with her the needs to spend more time on homework The comparison was with her more conscientious at the time of year 9 elder sister.

The reason i post this i remember being called the 'runt' of the litter by my English teacher. , She also informed the class that i could not possibly be related to X, because X was on her way to Oxford and i would be lucky to achieve a D at GCSE.

That same teacher managed to help me get a B at GCSE and quite miraculously a C at A level despite being Dyslexic/Dyspraxic (undiagnosed).

The point being why do teenagers get so offended when teachers use certain approaches or say things designed to motivate them.

[Ecureuil]

I think comparing to a sibling is pretty crap. All kids are different.

[Squirmy65ghyg]

Unhelpful approach by the teacher, very odd that you agree with it. Why on earth should she be compared?

[ScipioAfricanus]

I agree that pupils can be too sensitive to criticism nowadays but I don't think it's helpful of a teacher to compare siblings or indeed any other 'real' contemporaries. I tell my pupils my aim is always for them to achieve their best and do better than they could do just getting by, but I discourage comparison with each other (of course, they notice and compare themselves anyway!). They can collaborate and learn from each others' strengths and weaknesses without it being an actual overall comparison or competition.

[PumpkinPie2016]

I am a secondary teacher and would never compare one child to their sibling in this way!

What her sister did it didn't do is completely irrelevant here - what matters is the teacher giving your daughter feedback to improve on her own work.

[redexpat]

Comparing kids to their elder more successful siblings is crap. It means they dont see you as a person in your own right, but an extension of the eldest. It makes you hate your sibling, hate your teacher and you feel like shit.*

*I may be projecting.

[corythatwas]

If you remember the comments so clearly many years later, maybe you didn't take them quite so lightly at the time as you do now. But time tends to soften our reactions. No doubt it will do so for your dd too.

I can now laugh heartily at the teacher who commented on how ugly a piece of work of mine was (it really wasn't), but I know I was upset at the time- 40 years ago.

Your dd will probably have forgotten about this incident long before 40 years have passed.

My mother is very fond of comparing how seriously the younger generation takes parenting with her own more sensible approach: I can remember her in tears when things went wrong; she doesn't seem to remember.

[corythatwas]

For the record, both my DM and my grandmother were (highly experienced) teachers, and I can't imagine either of them being impressed by that as a piece of motivational teaching. They had better ways of inspiring their pupils.

[mountford100]

I think the teacher was trying to suggest that it was evident, she had not put 100% effort in to that essay !

DD 2 was not being particularly conscientious writing an essay at 10 PM on Sunday night when she had all weekend to write it !

She deserves to be taken to task for that.

I think unfortunately in the real world brothers/sisters are always going to be compared to each other !

[BenLui]

If your 14yo only spent twenty minutes on her essay I’d be fairly u sympathetic that the teacher pulled her up on it. There’s a fairly easy solution to that.

However comparing siblings is a seriously poor approach for a teacher to use.

[Silverthorn]

Pretty shit teaching and a rambling aibu. Why do you prefer your eldest dd over your youngest?

[corythatwas]

In families maybe, but why would that need to follow you into the outside world? I'm at work: nobody's going to sit there and compare me to my brother who happens to work in the same profession. It's not something you need to learn to cope with at all.

If you can't tell somebody off for not making an effort without bringing in an older sibling who has nothing to do with it, I would wonder why.

[Ecureuil]

I think unfortunately in the real world brothers/sisters are always going to be compared to each other !

I don’t remember being compared to my brother by a teacher. My work was marked against my abilities, not his.

[corythatwas]

sorry, typo: When I'm at work

[Whosthebestbabainalltheworld]

If, hand on heart, you never compare them to each other in front of each other fair enough to give out about the teacher.

If you do, what’s the problem with the teacher again? You can but she can’t?

[toffee1000]

Thankfully my brother and I went to different schools. Plus, I reckon most of the teachers would've recognised our separate talents and, erm, not compared us. My talents were in languages, my brother was shit at them. If we'd gone to the same school it would've been entirely unfair for teachers to compare my skill in languages to his.
Plus it's a horrendous feeling for a sibling to be compared to an older one, "why can't x be more like y" etc. It's a surefire route to an inferiority complex, where y feels like nothing they do is good enough because x did it first or x did it better.

[corythatwas]

It's sloppy thinking- just like the whole "our kids today" thing instead of addressing the individual problem is sloppy thinking. My dd has had to fight her way through life in ways that I could never have imagined. She has encountered disability and pain and prejudice and outright cruelty. She has done so with courage and good humour and grace- and with a complete lack of bitterness. I could not have done as well, nor (I think) could my mother. Why can she not be cited as an instance of "kids today"? Why does "the younger generation" or "young people today" always have to preface something negative?

[Ttbb]

Should she have made the comparison? No. But was it mean? No, if anything it sounds fair given the way your daughter behaved.

[HermionesRightHook]

My sister and I were compared constantly within the family and without and frankly it was one of the things that ruined my relationship with her. There's only so many times you can hear "why can't you be more like X" before you get really fucking pissed off with her. It didn't help that she courted it of course but she was only a child.

Of course it doesn't matter in the long run either - on paper slacker me is now much more successful but we're both happy and good at what we do.

[Glumglowworm]

It's not mean to tell DD2 that she needs to spend more time and take more care with her homework. That's constructive criticism.

It IS mean to compare her to her sister.

[confusedlittleone]

You can be pulled up on bad work without it needing to turn into a comparison between siblings...

[Awwlookatmybabyspider]

I hate the way they make comparisons between siblings.
Are they deliberately trying cause ructions and rivalry. Yes your older dd might have produced a better essay at that age, she's obviously highly academic. However not all children are academic. Some excell I'm other ways. You cant seem to get that through to some teachers, though

[mountford100]

I think perhaps the means of delivery the teacher used to criticize DD 2 s work was perhaps a bit sloppy, not mean and certainly without fact.

The other point she was making was DDs sister never had an attitude of just doing enough to avoid a detention .

The school is very academic and perhaps can be considered at times to be very demanding of its pupils !

If the other pupils had spent the recommended 50 minutes on the essay and DD 2 she deserved to be brought to task about that.

[ShoesHaveSouls]

V bad form to compare siblings like that.

[mountford100]

Not without fact .

[ShoesHaveSouls]

YABU OP, and so was the teacher.