Should I send in my nair facial hair removal cream to ds' science teacher?

[hercules1]

Or should I just accept the context of learning about reproduction etc and be pleased for her that she has never been blighted with facial hair when she teased ds in front of the class when he pointed out that women can also get facial hair?

only if you want to be petty.

I won't really as I know it would be petty. Will just have to accept these things.

This sounds like a really tactless and unprofessional teacher. Is your ds ok? If you really wanted to be petty, you could send a fake beard in and tell her to try it for herself!

No, not really. She asked which gender gets facial hair and ds answered both as women can also have facial hair. He's seen me often often removing it. SHe then laughed and asked the question again to the class and when a child answered only males said 'ha, one of the children in this class thinks women can get facial hair too!'.

Ds is thick skinned enough not to be affected and knows he's right. We've told him she must have meant it only in the context of explaining about puberty and trying to have very clear teaching about the differences between boys and girls but the other part of me wants to send in my facial hair removing cream or a friend of mine who keeps having to pluck out her beard!

I think you should at least write a note - that is a ridiculous statement from the teacher!

If I was teaching that class, I think I'd have said "yes, women can get facial hair but it is usually something other than puberty that makes it happen"

I am a fellow nair-consumer by the way so can totally understand where you're coming from

What an awful teacher. And very ignorant. Some races/people get more facial hair than others. The women in my family (jewish, italian, eastern european) have LOTS of facial hair. I probably spend as much time on my "mustache" as many men. My dd is far hairier than my ds. You really must say something to the teacher and her superior. Because even if your ds was wrong (which clearly he wasn't) ridiculing a child for making any sort of mistake in class is really just unprofessional and bad teaching.

Thanks for the replies. I don't think she's an awful teacher based on teh one comment. She is very young and I guess has never had a problem herself or was so focused on the whole puberty thing that she wasn't thinking outside of the box iyswim.

I guess I came here to post in order to vent a bit as I know it would be wrong to go to the school.

I felt the same way when his Geography teacher gave him a lower level than he should have got for a big project he did .

If she is young, she is finding her feet. She may have thought she was being light-hearted in a non-malicious way, and the joke didn't work on 11 year olds. She probably realised that the moment the words left her mouth.

In topic 7B Reproduction, there is a section on the changes that take place with puberty, not those that take place in later life. She should have said to your DS, "yes, that's true, some women do get facial hair when they are older, but we are talking about what happens in adolescence...".

It's a tricky topic because there are lots of misconceptions and it is not easy with a class of 30. I did it recently with my class of 10, and the number of off-topic questions/answers were enormous and it was a real job to cover the learning objectives.

I think that given that she is talking about the changes at puberty and to a young class it is better to stick with the more commont changes.

Or I can guarentee that some of the kids will come away thinking that all women grow large amounts of facial hair at puberty.

Facial hair is more of an issue for most women post menopause. And yes it can happen for smaller numbers of women at any age, but you don't want to overload the average year 7 class. they often get confused with the basics, let alone anything more complex.

To put this in perspective many of my year 7 class, on questioning confused the vagina with the umbilical cord! Glas I sorted that one out