DDs teacher giving serious misinformation WWYD?

[phantomnamechanger]

How to deal with this please......

DD has recently got a new English teacher. They are reading Pride & Prejudice (just started). Today in the lesson, the teacher has on several occasions referred to it being set in "the Victorian era"
that's a massive error to make, right? how do we point this out? DD was like when she told me, but there will be other kids who believe the teacher and for whom that will stick.
DD did not want to correct the teacher for fear of being reprimanded/thought rude.
WWYD?

Thank you, salmo.

Being a teacher is hard. Getting basic facts right isn't.

Psst : and even i know that P&P is not Victorian

My teacher when I was nine told me a bat wasn't a mammal. I like the know it all I still am took my encyclopaedia of mammals into school the very next day to prove it in fact was.

Surely all that is needed is a quick note written in a friendly way saying DC seems to think that Pride & Prejudice is set in Victorian era - must be miscommunication/misunderstanding, please can you correct?

I think you might be me Fut...

I was that smart arse child too

Signet, I think that the idea of the 'long Victorian age' is waay too sophisticated for this teacher, if she's explaining a novel as 'that's what things were like in the Victorian period' and who sounds alarmingly clueless. (Anyway, I don't think anyone could argue that any of Austen is even vaguely proto-Victorian in outlook, and P and P is pure 1790s.)

It's not as if she's getting two characters confused, or a minor plot point wrong, it suggests she's failed to grasp a crucial aspect of the novel. I am a university lecturer and this kind of major factual error would suggest a poor student...

When I was teaching, I once taught a class of 7 year olds the wrong word for a particular fruit in an MFL class. One of the children, who spoke that language at home, very sweetly came up to me, after the lesson and said " My Mummy calls it x not y." I was mortified, but very impressed with the way the child dealt with it, explained to the class and to the parent that I had a had a blip, and everyone was happy. I still think fondly of that child, and praised her to her Mum and the rest of the staff for her mature and polite attitude.
I would have been very upset if it had been referred to HOD, which IMO would have been a massive over-reaction.
So I would say that if a 7 year old can point out a mistake respectfully and non-confrontationally, so could your DD. If she doesn't feel able to do that, then I would not take it any further. Everyone, including teachers, can make mistakes, and public reprimands are not going to go down well.
If you really feel you have to say something, do it in person, not in an email, and speak directly to the teacher concerned.

Difficult to get the tone right I think. I was brought up not to question teachers. Even asking questions when you didn't understand was punished. I really wish children could question things, politely of course.

If DD just says 'hang on this was written before Good Queen Vic came to the throne, how come it counts as Victorian?' then it gives the teacher a chance to explain her reasoning rather than just saying 'Oi Miss, you is wrong'.

I'm the kind of teacher who would say "goodness, you're right. Now I feel like a but of a a fool. Have 500 house points" I'd MUCH rather a student pointed out an error than a parent emailed the HOD (mind you, I am the HOD...) Yesterday, for example, I handed out a document telling my school play cast that they were needed for rehearsal on Sunday 10th Feb. They took great delight in telling me that date doesn't exist. If one of the, had gone home and got their mum to email me about the mistake, I'd have been mortified - but more about the fact that the students felt they couldn't point out an error than anything else. I know my rehearsal schedule isn't exactly on the same level as this teacher's error, but the sentiment is the same - I'd feel dreadful if I felt that my students thought they couldn't tell me I was wrong for fear of how I'd take it.

It's a common misconception. My niece had a list of Victorians from her school which included Austen (these were primary children who had to pick a name from the list for an independent project).

I think the ideology of 'you must not question teachers' is really bad.

I had a good friend who was brought up that way when I was at school. It is a really stupid and damaging concept for children.

I think it's far less common nowadays, LRD. Thankfully.

this kind of major factual error would suggest a poor student...

Exactly what I was thinking.

And point of order (this is one of my fields of expertise) we might talk about the "long nineteenth century" (from 1789 to 1914) but we'd never call it the "long Victorian age" there is a difference. But not one that most GCSE students would understand or need to understand.

The teacher is wrong, and is misleading the pupils, to their disadvantage in examinations and so on. The teacher needs to do her preparation properly, and correct any errors of understanding in her class.

YY, that is reassuring, evil. But it seems bad for the children in this class. Lots of them would not even think to try to 'correct' a teacher.

This 'long nineteenth century'? It is like how the 80s started in about 1979 and ended in 1988?

Anyway, the children I teach have pointed out when I'm wrong about things and I teacher Reception!

Victoria wasn't even born when P&P was written. In fact Austen died before Victoria was born. In no way shape or form can Austen novels be described as Victorian.

Buffy, your post brought it all back to me. In Year 7 my English teacher
critiqued my choice of book to review on the grounds that it as a children's book. It was "The Wind in the Willows." Even at 11 I could see it functioned on quite a few levels. Apparently she could not.

I can't believe anyone finds it acceptable to use the adjective Victorian about a period before Victoria was Queen. As an English teacher she should be fully aware of the chronology of the texts she is teaching. Context and setting are crucial to full understanding. I'd send a note in with your dd and not involve anyone else at this stage.

People talk about 'long' or 'short' centuries when there is something striking that happened which, historians think, caused a real shift in how people were before and after. So for example, the fifteenth century (medieval) could be said to end in 1485 because of politial shifts to the Tudor dynasty. Or the nineteenth century could be said to 'end' in 1914 because that marks a more dramatic rupture in most people's lives than 1900.

I think most historians are quite cautious about using these terms nowadays.

I agree with those who say that your dd should raise it quietly with the teacher. Not publicly. My already dicey relationship with my sixth form English teacher went even further downhill when she misspelled the name of a novelist on the board and I told my friend who sat next to me that it was wrong (quietly). The teacher saw me and demanded that I share my observation with the rest of the class. After trying to get out of it, I reluctantly complied. She told me I was wrong, I said I wasn't, so she got one of his books off the shelf, and realised I was right. She then said she knew she'd seen it spelt like that somewhere. All very embarrassing and I don't think she ever forgave me. I am in general fairly good at spelling, and my previous English teacher used to check words with me, which didn't do anything for my street cred but showed she was secure in her own abilities. She was fab.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I think your dd should do as I say, not as I did, and speak to her teacher in private. I think emailing is going to make the teacher feel foolish which could in turn affect their relationship with your dd.

One colleague of mine (an economic historian) talks about the biggest shift being around the mid-16th century. So for him, smaller periods (such as Victorian, or Georgian) are irrelevant.