To email this teacher?

[LadyWire]

My DD is 18 and at 6th form college. To avoid dripfeeding she has ASD, depression and anxiety. She is extremely emotionally underdeveloped compared to her peers.


Her a-level English teacher told a tale today about seeing a cat being hit by a car and hitting it with a tennis racquet to "put it out of its misery" before throwing it to the side of the road. He then kept referring back to it throughout the lesson.


DD has come out of college inconsolable. I've emailed the teacher telling him that a) what he did was appalling and b) it's not an appropriate subject to speak to a class about. AIBU to be angry enough to contact him or should I have ignored it? Tbh I'm tempted to report him to college and to the RSPCA.

[MrsPworkingmummy]

I'm Head of English and I've got to say @Pengggwn , I completely agree with you. It is highly likely that the teacher used this story to illustrate a point (linked to a text they're studying perhaps) or was just having a joke. I would not expect the parent of a legal adult to email me telling me they thought that what a teacher had delivered in class was appalling - particularly if they did this without speaking to the teacher first to get both sides of the story. Even then, I'd question why you were getting involved and making a huge deal over something that has likely been taken completely out of context. School sixth forms have a completely different set up to college - which does your daughter attend?. In a college, students are treated much more like adults and are certainly not pandered too. Staff often dress casually and are referred to by their first name. I would perhaps have a word with your daughter about how sensitive she is - she might really struggle with some of the texts that need to be read at A-Level. I remember teaching Angela Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber' to an all boy's a-level class. As well as featuring words like 'c*nt' in a sexual context, the story focused on the protagonist's perverse and sadistic-pornography obsessed peadophile husband who killed his wives and locked them in a room full of highly sexualised weaponry. Would your daughter cope with this type of thing? I did not receive one parental complaint, and if I had, would have to politely recommend that the student withdrew from the course as thar was the set text.

[nostaples]

Do not think such subjects should be out of bounds. Have had to deal with material including guts spilling out of somebody's body and a wife's discovery of her husband's homosexuality leading to him shooting the back of his head off among other difficult topics in the space of a week in literature on very popular syllabuses. Just watching or listening to the news every day is quite a lot worse, but necessary. We can't wrap our kids in cotton wool, they need to be resilient enough to cope with upsetting information - because there's really no avoiding it.

[DressedCrab]

YABU. The class are all over 16 and your DD is an adult. You will make yourself look ridiculous, please don't.

[RavenWings]

No, you're overreacting. I can't imagine killing a cat is pleasant, but I'd do it if I knew a vet would take ages to arrive and the animal was seriously suffering. There are worse stories in the world unfortunately, and you can't shield her from them all.

It could very well have been illustrating a point.

[Andro]

isadoradancing123

The world will not revolve around her needs, but normally an adult would be able to either leave the area or ask the person to stop because the subject was distressing/inappropriate.

[NovemberWitch]

Even a 6th form college should have some rudimentary form of disability support to help guide the indifferent and uninterested staff. My children’s college did. So I’d be contacting them and looking for their guidelines and resourcing. For those of you saying that the real work won’t revolve around her needs, would you say the same fucking thing about a young adult with a physical disability?
Shakespeare et al are fiction, not real life. There’s a difference. An ?A level student knows that.

[isadoradancing123]

Perhaps, andro, but this doesn't change anything

[nostaples]

Andro, you would lead a very, very restricted life as an adult if you needed to leave the area or ask people to be quiet whenever a distressing subject came up. For example, you wouldn't be able to turn on the TV or radio, pick up a newspaper or have a discussion with anyone ever about most current affairs.

[ModreB]

She's 18yo. An adult. With no apparent SEN. Why is she emotionally incapable? What led to her being that way?

If she can't cope with, you know, real life, like animals dying on busy roads, and people putting them out of their misery, then how will she cope with paying bills, running a home etc. FFS, let her grow up.

Young doesn't mean incapable.

[LadyWire]

It's a 6th form college, she's had to repeat the year because of a breakdown last year. She said the story had nothing to do with what they were learning. She said he was repeating it because a small group of students were asking him about it. At one point the person sitting next to her laughed and pointed out it could have been one of her cats.

Aside from her being upset do most of you really think the right thing to do if you find an injured cat is to hit it again and chuck it to the side of the road? Somebody is going to be desperately missing that cat.

[Horridemma]

Please don't - heavens knows what the people from the RSPCA will when you report a college and teachers based on feedback from a lesson.

Some colleges have very little interaction with parents once students turn 18 and as for universities .....

I think you need to focus on developing your daughter's resilience. Colleges are not the same cosy environment as schools and class sizes can be a lot bigger.

[NovemberWitch]

I’d have thought battering a cat with a tennis racquet would be classed as animal cruelty by the police, however injured.
She’s a young adult with a disability whose mother is still an advocate and interpreter for some issues. Especially when faced with ‘Suck it up, snowflake or stop trying to cope with the real world’ attitudes.

[Andro]

There was nothing to stop her doing this

Except for an ASD diagnosis which means that she does not yet have the maturity of the average 18yo...

[LadyWire]

ModreB my op states she has ASD, depression and severe anxiety...

[Moussemoose]

NovemberWitch

Shakespeare et al are fiction, not real life

History isn't fiction, sociology isn't fiction, Biology isn't fiction, psychology isn't fiction!

A levels deal with difficult life issues, if may seriously impact on the education of others if a teacher can't talk about any thing as distressing as a dead cat!

The teacher does not sound "indifferent and uninterested" he using his own experience to add interest to a lesson. Some parents want a two dimensional, dry tedious curriculum with no life in it. Let your children grow up and stop complaining.

[NumberEightyOne]

I think that most 18 year olds would be able to cope with hearing that story. I'm sorry that your dd found it distressing though. Instead of emailing the teacher maybe you should have encouraged her to speak to the teacher herself?

[nostaples]

November, sorry, but the poem I mentioned about putting guts back in his body is taken directly from a documentary of a soldier's personal experience. If you can't deal with distressing subjects from real life that means history, politics, psychology and biology are completely out of the question. I would have thought that any discussion of the treatment of the Jews in WW2, particularly concentration camps, and pretty much anything about Syria at the moment would be and should be infinitely more distressing than the accidental death of a cat. Of course it's distressing but it is unavoidable and very important to know about this stuff.

[LadyWire]

Number she doesn't have the ability to raise anything with a teacher. She has ASD and it limits her a lot.

[Urubu]

At 18, and even at 16/17, this kind of story is fine. Not nice and a bit graphical, but age appropriate.

Regarding "putting it out of his misery", I imagine it depends on the state of the cat after it was hit... If you are sure it can't be saved, what is the right thing to do really?

[NovemberWitch]

OP, try posting on the SN boards. Unlikely you’ll get much sympathy from most parents of NT children. Or adult educators of difficult students. Both mine have AS and both attended 6th firms with very different attitudes to those here. Talk to the sn support and see if they can work with the tutor as a first step.

[Mumteadumpty]

It's not being unreasonable to email reminding the teacher that your DD has an ASC and found the lesson distressing. I don't think it's worth ranting as won't achieve anything apart from annoying him/her.