The style of teachers' comments on school work: then and now

[BenbeculaBeach]

Looking through my old school exercise books (from the mid 1980s) recently, I was struck by how scathing and uncompromising some of my teacher's comments on my (rather poor) Year Seven work were. I was generally quite well-behaved, but somewhat scatty and clearly didn't keep on top of the spelling corrections etc that I was supposed to do. I loved my teacher, but she took no prisoners and her comments seem harsh by today's standards. Certainly, there was no beating around the bush! However, I do think this contributed to our resilience.

I think teachers today would probably try to be more positive in their comments (and to be fair, there were some "Good work" remarks scattered through my books too). But it has made me wonder if there's something to be said for my teacher's tough style of teaching. I knew exactly where I was with her and was left in no doubt when my work hadn't been up to standard. I sometimes think that weak points are less clear with the "What went well" and "Even better if" marking schemes that my own DC's teachers use. The teachers are all lovely, and always very positive at parents' evening, but I do think there's something to be said for being direct about children's shortcomings.

had to laugh at SEE ME - CAN YOU READ? Definitely not something teachers today would get away with writing hahah.

I was trying to work out what the exercise you were doing was - seems to be parts of speech? It made me think the whole dynamic of teaching is so different now. I don’t even know if that would get taught these days. It seems like a different teaching world tbh.

I can remember my Maths teacher in the first year of secondary (year 7 now) ripping my exercise book in half and throwing it in the bin.

Seems like he was pretty annoyed at my amazing mathematical ability.

One of our teachers used to write long paragraphs when marking with fairly caustic comments at time.

Only thing was he had the worst handwriting I've ever seen, and frequently when he handed books back there would be a sea of hands of people asking him what he had written. There was always a certain amusement when he'd written something which included "bad handwriting" or "very messy".

But although they were much harsher, I think also we could get away with a bit of fun at times, which I haven't seen as much for my dc.

In music in year 7 we did a lot of listening to pieces of music and writing about it.
One lesson at the end of term, we'd done the Surprise Symphony followed by the Farewell Symphony. I'd missed half the lesson, so thought I would get away with only writing about the first one.
When I got it back, the teacher had written "No mark. See me. Farewell?" Which normally in his eyes was incomplete homework and detention. I went round to see him and he wasn't there. So I wrote on my book "Not farewell, I'll see you next term" and left it on his desk.
I received my book back at registration the next day with the note. "Very funny. You've got away with it. I'll see you next term :) " and he'd marked the single symphony as though I'd done them both too.
Thing was he was very strict, and I knew I'd never get away with it again, and no one else was going to try it on either. So he knew he could ease off at times because he only had to say "no" (or in his case play the death march on the piano) and any class would have immediately settled down because they wouldn't have wanted to face the consequences of not doing so.

I think there’s a resilience point too.

You got used to teachers being grumpy or critical and could shrug it off. We have a real issue at work with graduates coming in and not being able to deal with criticism, even of the constructive variety. Everything has to be dressed up in extra verbiage and there are endless demands for extra support and feedback which really aren’t practicable.

Hearing teachers make intemperate or sometimes unfair comment is actually a vital part of readying students for the real world. We do them a disservice by creating an expectation that it will never happen or by failing to give them the experience/skillset to deal with it.

I remember a religious education teacher crossing out what I had written, and writing RUBBISH!! in big letters (year 8). That was one subject I really didn't like, and my mum (a teacher) was always inspecting my exercise books. I tore out pages I didn't want her to see, and I got into trouble for doing so. That year I got into a massive spiral of lying about homework in subjects I didn't like.

In primary school (year 2), here's a memory which was not about something a teacher had written, but how she handled a situation. With this teacher, woe betide any child who did something without being told, even if it was obvious that we'd be told to do it in the next ten seconds. She wrote "kitten" on the board, and so did more than half the class. She then did a slow walk around the class, throwing children's books on the floor. She then made them pick them up, and stand at the front, holding them up. She berated them for writing "kitten" when she hadn't told us to, then said in a kinder voice "now write the word 'kitten'".

I hardly ever got any comments on school work. And if I did it was of the "could do better" variety without any hints as to what I could do to improve.

And my first completed and marked degree assignment.

I had missed the assignment being handed back and at the next session asked the tutor - ‘do you know what mark I got’ - his answer, loudly in front of the whole class - ‘yes, I do know…easy, nought…you copied, plagarism’.

I didn't even know what plagiarism was! Failed my first year because of it.

Indeed. Some of my teacher's comments were quite strong, but we learnt to shrug them off and not be derailed by them.

Did you like this teacher?

I really did! She was a wonderful, inspiring teacher, full of character, and I remember her with great affection. She was quite old-school, sarcastic as teachers often were back then, and she could be very amusing. And as I said in my original post, she wasn't overly negative - there were quite a few positive comments scattered through my books too, but I'm not focusing on them because I'm interested in exploring the possible power of criticism (rather than compliments) in this thread. I feel that it may be undervalued, at least in teachers (I'm also thinking about whether parents should perhaps be more critical too, but that's a thread for another day).

To be clear, this definitely isn't intended to be a teacher-bashing thread. I think teachers walk a tightrope every day and they have my utmost respect. They have to be a psychologist, a negotiator, a saint and a diplomat, as well as a teacher, whenever they are in school. I'm sure most of them must sometimes think the sorts of things my teacher clearly thought, but they'd probably lose their jobs if they were to express such views.

I also think because you got bad feedback, the good feedback was more impactful. I still remember very vividly answering a question in Y3 and my teacher saying something like ‘incredible, you’ll go far!’ It has such an impact on me. I already loved school but that made me really want to work and it carried me all through primary.

I think a lot of these comments were when we were doing something called "subject and predicate" - a topic that I never managed to get to grips with! I asked my DC if they've learnt about subject and predicate, and was met with blank expressions, so I don't think it's taught any more.

But yes, teaching is very different now. It was mostly "chalk and talk" when I was at school. Now, at least at our schools, the teacher is constantly circulating around the classroom, the DC do a lot of discussion in pairs/small groups, and the whole environment is very collaborative.

My favourite, mid nineties, was a PE one.

Murasaki simply doesn't try.

It was a fair cop.

That's just insane.

I had something similar where the comment was that I would never amount to much in sport.

A few years ago, I won two European silver medals in a sport I do. I still from time to time wonder how the hell that happened.

DH once had "Rarely moves."

My brother once got "this is a travesty of punctuation" from a teacher who went on to be head of Ofsted for many years. Make of that what you will.

Excellent! My parents thought mine was so funny that they still have it. All the rest were glowing, so they really cared about as much as I did.

Congratulations! I assume the report was not about that sport.

I won County medals in fencing at 16, I just had no interest whatsoever in hockey in uncomfortable games knickers and a silly skirt in a rainy November.

Not much was ever actually marked by a teacher with DD2. I think she would have preferred that, even with harsh remarks.

I once got my book back with a big red cross over the entire page and a demerit because I had spelled a word in the title incorrectly. Harsh times. No wonder we're all in therapy.

Exactly. I often struggle to find the positives when I know someone has the capability but just can’t be arsed. Why do we dress it up and make them
think that’s ok?
I also agree about students. Just had a really fractious situation with one as she expected it all to be perfect but it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t all hearts and rainbows. My fault obviously and her mummy even told me I had to stop asking her to do so much … 🧐 I despair.

It's interesting that sometimes getting negative feedback didn't stop you from liking the teacher. I think there is a place for respecting the teacher's knowledge, skills and efforts to actually teach you something you're going to need to know.

And I agree with a PP that good comments mean more when you know they give completely honest feedback.

"SEE ME - CAN YOU READ?" made me smile 😅

I think they could get away with writing that back in t'day because it was a reasonable assumption that most if not everyone in the class could read. Nowadays, I wouldn't have said that in my secondary classroom because not all the students could read and it loses its impact somewhat when the answer is "no" 😬

My favourite school report was the PE one left completely blank in Year 11. The PE teacher was obsessed with "her netball girls" and the rest of us didn't get a look in, so my friends and I would go swimming or to the gym in the public swimming pool & leisure centre next door to the school every PE lesson. No one stopped us, the pool staff assumed we were doing it for our PE lesson so didn't charge us or anything. PE teacher didn't have a clue what we were up to so she just left our reports blank. I loved those PE lessons 🤣

I suffered as a result of my elder brothers PE report in the 1970's and the teacher's points to improve.
'J needs to improve his tackling' lead to 6 months of him stalking me like a Rugby Ninja,jumping out behind me and grabbing my legs to bring me down on the floor regardless of the surface. I had scabby knees for ages.
His tackling did get better though.