“A British Columbia father has sued his son’s Grade 2 Montessori teacher claiming that she ‘purposely and maliciously worked to damage the self-esteem’ of his son over such things as failing to encourage the child’s spelling, not sending home a daily homework list and, in one case, displaying an unfinished poem in the school hallway. …Similar issues will arise in a Montreal courtroom next Tuesday, when a teacher at Westmount’s prestigious Roslyn School will face the first of two lawsuits by aggrieved parents.” Canada’s National Post is kind enough to quote me on the U.S.-style trend (Zosia Bielski, “The new golden rule”, National Post, Mar. 20).
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In Canada; schools
The lawsuit claims the teacher hindered the student’s learning by: - Failing to make his son record his first journal entry until two months into the school year. - Failing to make his son complete a handwriting workbook for the first three months of the school year. - Failing to provide more challenging work in spelling, reading and comprehension. - Failing to make the son finish a one-page poem and subsequently displaying the unfinished poem in the school hallway. - Failing to send a daily homework list home with the boy for three weeks, thereby “knowingly setting up the son for failure.”
Are they trying to put the Onion out of business, because there is no way you can parody a story like this. I sure hope Canada has loser pays.
This is harmful in more ways than one. First is the idiocy of the parents suing the school for their son’s failure or lack of work. This feeds into the “blame everyone else” mentality.
Secondly, it will require schools to take more control of the education process thus depriving involved parents from making decisions concerning their children’s education.
By the way, if you didn’t read the article, there is a nice quote by Mr Olson.