We are exactly eight school days into the 6th-grade school year. Over the long weekend, Freck Jr. had a couple of writing assignments, one of which was to write a persuasive paragraph.
This was the first sentence in his paragraph:
“The war in Iraq is a load of hooie.”
I contained my glee upon my first reading (we’ve taught him well, it would appear). My husband took issue with Freck Jr.'s rather informal mode of expression (as did I), then suggested he choose a different topic. I said I didn’t have a problem with the topic.
Much angst ensued. Freck Jr. decided to change topics but couldn’t come up with another. No suggestion of another topic or a different way to express “load of hooie” was satisfactory to Freck Jr.
I left for a meeting, came back 90 minutes later. The assignment has been completed. Freck Jr. decided to stick with his original topic and change his opening sentence to “I think the war in Iraq is wrong.”
What comes out later from my husband is this: He knows the teacher’s husband and has discussed politics enough with him to know that the husband’s opinion on the war in Iraq is not the same as Freck Jr.'s. My husband therefore assumes that the teacher has the same politics as her husband and will punish Freck Jr. for his views.
I don’t assume anything of the sort. Maybe I’m naive.
The really awful thing is that I know my husband will now filter every comment from the teacher through the “She’s a right-wing fanatic bent on punishing me through my son” filter. (My husband is rather paranoid.)
The school district Freck Jr. is in includes damn near every Democrat in the county, so it’s not like this veteran teacher never before had to deal with students with views different than hers (assuming they are different).
Would you have advised your kid to write about something that is not so controversial?
Heh. This reminds me of my high school boy-friend whom I met at a Lion’s Club youth speaking event. His speech was an argument for why Australia should become a republic. It went down a treat coming so close after the Loyal Toast to the Queen. His mother tried to tell him he’d have a staunch monarchist audience to no avail.
I profoundly hope that your son expressing a political opinion that may be different from the teacher’s will be OK. In my opinion 6th grade is soon enough to be learning how to express one’s political views even if they may not be popular with authority. Ideally the teacher should be looking at the competence of the composition, not at the contents. And as you say, should be aware that she’s in a district with a lot of people who may hold the same views as your son.
I’d keep an eye out and see how your son feels about her attitude but I would try very hard to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Chances are good that she’s grading from a rubric, not from some arbitrary sense of agreement. Most schools now require that teachers present a rubric before the assignment, so the student knows exactly how the grading will work. The rubric, if well designed, if filled with mostly objective things for grading.
If he ends up with a grade less than you think the technical merits…uh…merit, then ask to see the rubric. If she doesn’t have one, ask why not, and ask her to explain her scoring system.
If your son’s teacher is at all professional or caring, she’s certainly not going to “punish” a student (a sixth-grader, for crying out loud) for having a different political opinion than she does - if, indeed, it is different than hers. Your husband certainly is paranoid and maybe a teeny bit self-centered, if he thinks a teacher would even conceive of “punishing him through his son”. Maybe he’d benefit from a meeting with the teacher to calm his fears (or would that just make him think that the teacher will punish him through his son because she’ll think he’s a nutjob?).
My 11th grade History teacher was SJ Father López, aka Lupi (after a cartoon character, Loopy de Loop). He was a Republican, which in Spanish terms means one who wants to take the monarchy down, usually left-wing but not always (Franco’s uprising had “long live the republic” as its war cry until the monarchist Carlistas joined, under the condition that he’d restore the monarchy).
One of the assignments we had was an essay, 12-20 pages, “choose your subject”. When we brought them in, Lupi took a look at the cover. Some, he snickered and put them on a pile to the left. Others, he rolled his eyes and put on the right. I asked him why but he said “you’ll figure it out when you’re older” and answered my glare with “I’m serious, knowing you, I know you will.”
I did figure it out a few years later. I was talking with some old classmates and we mentioned the subjects we’d chosen for those essays.
Right-hand essays: subjects which we’d never been told about in History class, often controversial ones. The Punic wars; the Carlista wars (my own); current flavors of Carlism; the Anarchist movement in Spain; Italy’s wars of unification. Tons of Carlism, since many of us came from Carlista families; it was something we’d heard very much about at home but which has been very carefully hidden in schoolbooks (apparently 6 wars in 150 years is an unimportant subject).
Right-hand essays: “safe” subjects which we’d been told about many times. Sculpture in Italian Rennaisance; the transition from Romanic to Gothic art. Most of them were about art for some reason.
IOW: your essay went to the left pile if its title already said “I think on my own”; to the right if it said “safe does it”.
I’m guessing your son’s teacher uses this exercise as her own “early in the year evaluation of thought processes”.
If the teacher is a professional, then your child is fine. As an English teacher, I’ve graded (and given As to) lots of essays on topics that I personally disagreed with. I’m just grading their ability to organize their ideas and write them effectively. I spent a really irritating two weeks one year reading at least 20 research papers arguing that abortion should be illegal, and none of those kids faced any reprisals- in fact, I didn’t even remember which kids they were a few days later.
I am now totally cowed by the Spanish educational system. How old were you in 11th grade? I don’t think I wrote a 10 or more page paper until my third year of college (well over 20 years old at the time).
And what every one else said: The teacher will be looking for thought process, not necessarily the thoughts themselves, unless your kid detailed plans to blow up the school. If she does otherwise, you have serious grounds for grievances.
Let’s do hope she acts like a professional. My fifth-grade teacher punished me all year because my parents both went to the college that was a rival to her college.
I would look at this as a function of manners. As a general rule religion and politics are emotionally charged topics capable of creating much ill will. Teachers certainly don’t need to be enlightened or lectured by their students on these topics. If the papers are read out loud by the students then debate is likely to ensue. Unless this is a debate class these topics become op-ed pieces for the author. If a teacher discussed his/her opinion on politics or religion I would be on the phone immediately.
Back in the day, we were required to write a term paper in 11th grade. Mine was about 20 pages without footnotes. I don’t recall the page requirement but I feel certain that 10 pages would have gotten a failing grade given the subjects and research expected.
I would doubt there would be a problem with the teacher. The assumption that the wife must have the same politics as the husband is a stretch.
I am interested in why your son couldn’t come up with a different topic (not that he should have). Could he really not come up with something else to be persuasive about, or did he just not want to?
I was kind of wondering about this too. On the one hand, he should feel free to express a political opinion in school without fear of retaliation. On the other hand, I’ve got this mental image of your son as one of those people who can’t tell you what the weather’s like outside without sequeing into an anti-Bush diatribe. Like Magiver said, there’s a time and place for political discussions (especially bitterly contentious ones). I’d just make sure your son didn’t pick the topic solely to get the teacher’s goat.
If I knew how to figure that out, I think the coming years might be a whole lot easier!
It was turning into one of those “choose your battle” moments. He insisted he could not think of another topic, and every suggestion was met with a “No, I don’t really know that much about X.” (Like he’s an expert on the Iraq war!)
I hope to Og he’s not going to become one of those people. He’s not one now. But, like a lot of kids, he picks up on his parents’ political leanings. We’ve had umpteen conversations with him about how it is NOT a good idea to express political views if he can’t defend his position. But the church we belong to is heavily focused on peacemaking, and that has probably influenced his feelings about the war as much as the “War is Not the Answer” sign in our front yard.
To be fair to Mr. freckafree, defenders of George’s Iraq Misadventure have been known to get petty,dangerous, and downright unprofessional these days, so his discomfort isn’t entirely surprising.
That said, I agree that a professional instructor wouldn’t have a problem with students expressing views different from their own. A good instructor should encourage it, IMO.
11-th grade English teacher in the US here. My kids in AP English have one term paper that’s 12-20 pages long, but the trend in English education is definitley towards shorter writing assignments, more often, simply because it allows for more feedback and more revision.
That’s what the kiddo wrote! If you want to take over the job of nitpicking my son’s writing, you’ll probably get a lot farther than I usually do. Have at it! Please!
