13 year old "bullied" by an entire school district

[lupo pazzesco]

Link

Long and short of it:

The Frederick Douglass Foundation of New York released a statement on Friday about a 13 year old student, who apparently royally pissed off her teachers. She was asked to write an essay about the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, and she did so. However, she drew a lot of uncomfortable parallels to white teachers in her school failing to teach herself and other minority students, talking about the illiteracy amongst her peers. She calls for her teachers to teach, but also for her fellow students to stop being students and to become learners.

Her teacher was so offended, she made copies for fellow teachers and the principal. The straight A student started receiving low grades, with no explanation, and no showing said tests/assignments to her mother, and allegedly, a lot of phone calls from all teachers - not just the girl's - were being made to her house, telling her parents their daughter is angry and she's been branded a problem child.

She ended up in a school for "throwaway children".

I don't have time to look up any more sites ,but here's some local news on the story

here




Thoughts??

[NateSean]

What amazes me is how this doesn't make national headlines.

[fireheart17]

However, she drew a lot of uncomfortable parallels to white teachers in her school failing to teach herself and other minority students, talking about the illiteracy amongst her peers. She calls for her teachers to teach, but also for her fellow students to stop being students and to become learners.

Her teacher was so offended, she made copies for fellow teachers and the principal. The straight A student started receiving low grades, with no explanation, and no showing said tests/assignments to her mother, and allegedly, a lot of phone calls from all teachers - not just the girl's - were being made to her house, telling her parents their daughter is angry and she's been branded a problem child.

You know, that is all kinda of fucked up. She grasped the concept well, managed to draw a parallel between then and now and even tried to encourage her own classmates to break the mold so to speak. There is nothing wrong with being educated and I can see this girl going far in life.

[jackfaire]

There is nothing wrong with being educated and I can see this girl going far in life.

I can't. Educated people don't tend to do very well. At least not in the academic atmosphere that has existed for at least as long as I have been alive.

All through school if you actually learned anything from the material, expressed independent thought, or an ability to grasp the material teachers would penalize you for it. You weren't there to learn you were there to memorize and regurgitate.

Very few teachers actually encouraged education. School always focused on networking and being popular as the keys to success. Teachers praising and rewarding those students that were considered more popular by their peers while marginalizing and ignoring the ones that were not.

Added thought: It was even worse in High School as most of the teachers seemed to be "Old Teenagers" who had never quite wanted to move past High School and used teaching at one as a way to still be cool and hang out with teens.

[fireheart17]

All through school if you actually learned anything from the material, expressed independent thought, or an ability to grasp the material teachers would penalize you for it. You weren't there to learn you were there to memorize and regurgitate.

I guess you and I had different experiences. My school seemed to lack independent thought alarms. You could come up with an independent idea as long as it stuck to the topic. If you wanted to do your individual music project on how didgeridoos are made, then you could.

Very few teachers actually encouraged education. School always focused on networking and being popular as the keys to success. Teachers praising and rewarding those students that were considered more popular by their peers while marginalizing and ignoring the ones that were not.

This is something we actually discussed in my Sports class today. We discussed that what you're describing results in a bad teacher overall: the trick is to be inclusive.

Added thought: It was even worse in High School as most of the teachers seemed to be "Old Teenagers" who had never quite wanted to move past High School and used teaching at one as a way to still be cool and hang out with teens.

And this is the exact reason why I chose to study primary school teaching as opposed to secondary school. (primary down here is K-7) You've moved on from primary school stage by the time high school's over and while you might relive your childhood through certain activities, it's kind of hard to want to "hang out" with a bunch of seven-year-olds.

I did write the creative essays for my undergraduate degree at university. Depending on the tutor, I would get either a distinction or a credit for them. Usually though, the problem wasn't that I'd grasped the topic or similar, it was more that I couldn't express the argument very well.