Should I correct a teacher?

[Sadgirlonatrain]

In my son's recent geography homework, one of the questions on the sheet referred to the decline of coal mining in the North East.

"How would this of effected the area?"

No wonder the use of 'would of' is so widespread now, never mind the incorrect use of 'effected.'

Would you say anything to the school?

"Would of" really isn't a mistake that anyone could make!

It's not a typo, so it could only be written by someone who doesn't understand how the sentence should be constructed.

God knows I make plenty of typos, occasionally double type or omit words etc, but I would never make the "would of" / "could of" / "should of" mistake because I know that the word that goes in those phrases is have, and I know why it is structured like that.

Nope.
My dyslexic DC struggles to read as it is. I expect that her teachers whose job it is to teach her how to read don’t make things worse for her.

OK. Well I hope the old going abusive tactic works.

Agree with this. "Lazy mare"???

Simply feed back to the teacher, either via a note on the assignment or the child could talk to them about it when they hand it in. No nastiness is required, and there's no need to escalate to the headteacher.

I might be more polite than that to the teacher’s face but yes, inside I would be thinking that they are lazy for not proofreading and probably unsuited to the job.

I would absolutely raise it with the teacher (not the head). It isn't acceptable. Correct spelling and grammar aren't optional, and I really don't know why the general culture around written communication seems to be so lax and shoddy. "Effected" rather than "affected" is bad, but the dreaded "would of" is alarming and actually a bit depressing in a document sent home by a school.

I appreciate that teachers are tired and overworked (I teach at university myself), but certain skills - above all, the ability to communicate clearly and correctly in a position of responsibility as an educator - should really be inherent. I work freelance as an academic proofreader and editor, and sometimes I'm awake until 2am to meet a deadline. The spelling and grammar still has to be perfect, even when my eyes are falling out of my head from tiredness, because that's what I'm being paid for and perfection is the baseline. I would argue that the ability to communicate clearly and correctly should be expected as a baseline skill for all teachers, regardless of what specific subject is concerned. The responsibility is too great.

I also teach a humanities subject at university level, and many students do seem to struggle with even the most basic grammatical principles. I do appreciate that this isn't necessarily their teachers' fault, but students - especially children - should at least be able to have the confidence that their educators are capable of communicating correctly at the most fundamental level.

Not just unsuited to teach my child but also other children who trust that they are being taught to read and write properly and in many cases - where their parents can’t help them - are being badly let down.

Good spelling and grammar are important but are not the most important attribute for teaching. Being able to engage and enthuse your students, being perceptive and caring, an ability to manage class discipline and be firm but fair, ability to plan, to maintain good records, resilience, the ability to explain and guide. These are all more important, and yet you have a teacher on here (apparently) who thinks this particular teacher "is not fit to teach", wowsers!

Engaging your pupils is useless if you’re engaging them to learn things that are incorrect. They’d be better off playing in the fields.

@Thereisnolight 🤦🏻‍♀️

Absolutely

That's a rather facile response which doesn't really warrant any more of my attention

Yep. I would have to. It's really important that the children don't learn something that's incorrect.
I had to do it once with regard to a maths question. Teacher had marked incorrect something about angles in a hexagon and I had to explain to them how it worked. Scary really.

Yes it’s terrible grammar!

Good for you

Unfortunately this level of error does indicate that this teacher shouldn't be teaching any subject that requires any essay writing or written work.

You should raise it with the head.

I think that maybe this kind of mistake would be ok for an art teacher or a PE teacher. I'm not sure if there's any other subject that someone who has such a low level of literacy should be allowed to teach. Teachers are underpaid which is why the standards are so low, but this is still unacceptable.

This is not a teacher being lazy, because people whose grammar is good enough don't need any extra effort to avoid making such basic mistakes - they're glaringly obvious. Anyone who requires extra effort to know that there is a problem with this sentence is just not literate enough to teach geography. What other mistakes are they teaching your child? And how can they possibly correct their work when they don't know that "of" is not the same as "have"?

My kids know that if they ever get a text from me that includes "would of" then it means I've been kidnapped ... 😁

As an ex-teacher I would absolutely be grabbing a red pen and correcting that!

Unfortunately, this is going to happen more and more as the current government attempt to replace specialist teachers with cheap alternatives.

Might save them money, but not great for the kids, at all!

When I lived in France, where the school culture is different, a child I taught wrote me a nice card at the end of the year. A friend's Mum (also a former teacher) corrected the SPAG on it! I was devastated that she'd ruined my nice card.

Having said that, as a former teacher, I wouldn't mind receiving a polite and friendly email which picked me up on a grammatical error in something I'd sent home (although I've had to bite my tongue when a parent tried to correct me on something and they were in the wrong). I would absolutely hate for it to have been automatically escalated to my HoD or the HoY without having brought it to my attention first. The first point of call, if you're going to raise it at all, should be with the subject teacher who sent it out, not going over her head.

It's appalling. Do say something.

Ok, so not every perfect mumsnetter would make it but lots of other people do from time to time. It's just a gramatical error, it's hardly the end of the world.

Unless this teacher was constantly getting things wrong then I simply couldn't be arsed to send a complaint in which will almost certainly be ignored.

Look on the bright side, OP - it's better than the one I met at some school event who said "We wuz on us 'olidays"

Yes I'd say something, but I'd keep it gentle, probably along the lines of proof reading messages or similar

If they cannot use the correct grammar they should not be teaching.

I hate posting on threads like this because I usually make a mistake but it makes me itch

If it’s a worksheet to hand in, yes. I would not be able to stop myself 😂.
I would just put a polite cross through the ‘of’ and in RED PEN, written ‘have’.

Otherwise what’s the point of Spag SATS (ironic question)?!

Can't you raise it with the teacher directly? I can't believe some people are suggesting you involve the Head of school! That's a bit far!

I would at least allow the teacher to rectify it personally, see how they address it and go from there but I can see I'm alone in thinking this.