To expect school teachers to actually educate my child?

[ICancelledTheCheque]

Maybe I'm being a bit PFB but this has really irked me.

DD is Y7 in a big academy secondary school. She showed me some work she had done - in three paragraphs there were six spelling errors and five grammatical errors. The teacher didn't mark up a single thing and just put big green ticks and irritating smiley faces on her work and wrote "excellent work" at the end.

But it wasn't excellent work. How is she going to learn if they don't flag this stuff up? Is this the norm these days? Doesn't bode well for GCSEs if so!!

I circle all spelling and grammar mistakes in red ink. If a student has dyslexia I write the correct spelling of the word alongside, but only do it once for each word. That is our school policy.

The best poets know the rules and can write in tightly constrained forms. Their knowledge provides a scaffold from which they can be fantastically creative.
My point is that we need both and knowing about the rules does not destroy creativity unless they are imposed. Students can have practice both with a good teacher.

Counterpoint - teachers don't actually get to choose what they teach. So yes, blame the methodology and syllabus all you like. I agree (and I agree with a lot of what Ken Robinson says). But if you think teachers are loving being a slave to the data and the rigidity and soullessness of teaching to the exam, snd blaming the pupils for not being up to the task, I think you're well off the mark.

I want an 11 year old to know they are making spelling and grammatical mistakes.

Yes! The marking should reflect the truth. Her content is fantastic and her spelling/grammar needs more work.

"The best poets know the rules and can write in tightly constrained forms. Their knowledge provides a scaffold from which they can be fantastically creative."

Great essay title.

I do think knowing when you've made an error is important but also agree with the teachers that they are often left with very little time to highlight this with individual students and then follow up adequately. Good grammar is important and does convey the right impression in certain circumstances, such as a job application or work presentation. My job is one that requires attention to detail in this aspect.

I do think that parental support in many aspects of education is invaluable and my experience is that most teachers really value an involved parent. But it doesn't follow that every child will have a parent who is willing or indeed able.

At present I am a Home Educator, so it falls to me to teach these things and although DS is only 7 so grammar is at an earlier stage I do brief explanations when he's missed something. I try to keep it light so it doesn't knock his confidence but after a while I notice it does become automatic for him.

"The best poets know the rules and can write in tightly constrained forms. Their knowledge provides a scaffold from which they can be fantastically creative." Discuss.

I utterly agree and think this is where my own education failed me. I wasn't even taught simple rules for comma usage beyond breaking complex sentences in two and in lists. I wasn't taught how to use colons and semi-colons at all. I learned through reading and making mistakes and being corrected, but I still don't know the actual rules. It's a little like playing a symphony from memory, but not knowing how to read music. Thing is, I can write legibly and obviously with some professionalism (enough to earn me three degrees and some publications). But what I read from students exiting schools now is often atrocious. Common mistakes include;

• inability to write proper sentences.
• inability to use proper capitalisation
• don't talk to me about the dreaded apostrophe
• comma usage that is purely random.

Beyond this, I often read work that is simply unreadable. It comprises of a jumble of words that don't actually make sense. If the student is being creative or exhibiting analytical or critical thinking it's entirely lost because the writing is fundamentally unreadable.

I think there is a hierarchy. First, there is the 'ideal', as exhibited by the quote. Then there is what I was given at school (I know how to do it, and I do it well, but the 'why' and proper naming of grammatical rules eludes me, as does the 'higher reaches' of grammar). Then there is what many students entering post-school education have today, which is very little in terms of literacy. A caveat here is that it is also likely to be the case that HE entry standards are also likely slipping as the sector is commercialised.

Just occasionally, btw, I do get students who are wonderfully creative and do think critically and deeply but who can't write. I sent them off to the appropriate support staff and they are often 'fixed' after some time and practice.

Eolian -
" teachers don't actually get to choose what they teach "

But they do get to choose HOW they teach (motivate etc).

Hmmm. To a certain extent. Depending on the policies of the school.

For example this thread was about marking. Schools have marking policies - the individual teacher can't just decide on their own system for marking, whatever their own opinion might be on the rights and wrongs of the policy. I'd love to choose my own way of marking. I'm thinking maybe the Hogwarts grading system -

O - outstanding
E - Exceeds Expectations
A - Acceptable
P - Poor
D - Dreadful
T - Troll

And even in terms of methodology and motivation - I've spent much of my teaching career being told "Right. New initiative. From now on as a department we're all going to be doing in every lesson." Even now that Ofsted has stopped being so prescriptive about what they expect to see in lessons, that doesn't stop schools and departments from jumping on the next educational bandwagon and insisting all staff follow suit.

Eolian:

Damned right it doesn't.

Earlier in the thread I mentioned my school has demanded we create our PP presentations with each line in a different colour. Well, that is merely the latest wheeze Three months before that we were changing them so the text was blue. Three months before that it had to be black on a white background. Images and animations are strongly discouraged!

So that puts the mockers on reusing stuff, doesn't it? What a pain in the arse.

What a load of absolute bollocks. So glad I'm just doing cover teaching, private tutoring and a private adult class now. My adult class like worksheets, nice detailed grammar explanations and translation. I make up my own syllabus and we have a coffee break and a natter half way through. It's bliss .

Haven't had time to catch up on this thread until now (too busy crushing creativity...).

Yetanother I think your education did fail you if you weren't actually taught about colons and semi-colons, yes. I must point out that we are absolutely compelled to teach these things (and I definitely agree that we should). The problem is that many pupils (and I really mean many) will not get it unless you dedicate a quite unreasonable amount of time to it. So, you do teach it. Some will master it; with others the regular reminders (in the form, preferably, of talking to them about their work, not covering their work in red) will start to work; with others, they simply won't ever really get it. In some cases that will be through laziness, but certainly not all. And they will lose those marks when it comes to exams. That's how it works.

Obviously that is a simplified version of what happens. Obviously teachers try various methods. We attend many training sessions and experiment with different approaches. We do not rely on random irate posters like counterpoint to throw TED talks at us online. The childish insistence on putting 'teachers' in inverted commas is very rude, counterpoint. Who made you the expert?

I agree with the analogy of rules as a scaffold which provide a framework for creativity. The problem comes when it takes all the time (and more)to teach the framework, leaving no time for creativity. That cannot be right. At some point, you have to let the kids be creative with whatever level of expertise they have. And that means allowing some pieces of work to be riddled with (gasp) uncorrected errors so that the child can explore a new idea.

This thread started because a parent started a snidely titled thread to complain that a teacher was not covering her daughter's work in red (or green?) pen. Is it any wonder that a number of teachers have waded in to explain that this is not the only way to teach? It's the sheer arrogance of non-teachers telling teachers how to do their job that annoys many posters. It doesn't happen with other professions; teachers, it seems, are fair game. And so, as I've said before, children are taught contempt for teachers at home. This undermines teachers further, and schools become even harder to manage.

they simply won't ever really get it.

I do get this with some of the more complex rules of grammar. But let's take the humble apostrophe. I've been caught out in a couple of it's more complex uses (I forgot that 'photo's' is technically truncated, for example), but the rules are really quite simple otherwise (apart from it's / its, which might take some practice). But I have students who simply cannot (do not) use it. I must admit I put it down to sheer fucking laziness and it frustrates me no end.

in a couple of it's more complex uses

Bugger. Where's me petard? :).

For the record, I just spent 2 hours deep marking some yr11 creative writing. I have marked for specifics related to the AOs and SPAG.
Another hour in the morning and I'll have finished the class.

They will then spend 20 mins at the beginning of the lesson redrafting and correcting.

It does happen.

Just not on every piece of work.

How do you learn if no one ever points out errors. In my day we got incorrect spellings and grammatical errors underlined. Writing out corrections 3 times was part of next homework. Mistakes repeated less often.
I get life has moved on. I think it's a bit too touchy feely

If you did that to my dc he would spend more time writing out corrections than learning the next topic.

Have you RTFT mum?

I would be fuming actually, I expect a teacher to teach. I understand they have a lot of kids work to mark but that's part of their job! I know we don't exactly pay for our education in the same way as other countries but I expect my child to be taught everything she needs to get a good job after school. I expected my work to have red marks on at school, I didn't feel discouraged by it, I felt I was learning not to make the same mistake again. How on earth did we manage before all this sensitive treatment? Lol

We had caning back then, and children as young as primary school age were disciplined with a leather strap called a tawse in Scotland - not everything was better back then!

And just because you weren't discouraged by lots of red pen on your work, doesn't mean that other children weren't then, and aren't now.

"I understand they have a lot of kids work to mark but that's part of their job!"

Telling me it is part of my job doesn't make more hours in the day. On good days I have 96 books to mark. On less good days I can have 128 + 32 pieces of homework. I obviously also have to deliver lessons, plan them, meet parents, run a club, put help in place for specific children, deal with everyday and less than everyday emotional and social issues....

If the school made it a priority to mark every single spelling / grammatical mistake in every piece of work, every day, then I simply couldn't do anything else (including sleep, eat or go to the toilet!)