Today a student told me I made his life easier

But no-one seems to be happy about that

A former student of mine (I taught him English from 4th-6th grade, he’s now in 7th grade) told me that his English classes were easy. That pretty much validated what I do: I don’t have time to teach them a lot of English, but I do give them a good grounding in the basics, so that whatever middle school throws at them, they should be able to take it in their stride. I regard that student, and his feedback today, as a success story.

But for my wife/partner and the student’s mother, this is not success. He does not come top in his class in English. He makes, by his own admission, careless mistakes. The gap between his grades, at 90+%, and the top grades, 99%, is echoing. Never mind that he is now, at age 12, quite successfully reading novels in English (the fantastic Weird School series by Dan Gutman).

The correct thing to do is to stop listening to the women in thrall to this sadistic and anti-learning school system, and to carry on teaching the right way. But the pressures they apply are real. And that’s how I feel, as a very bolshy outsider. The pressures on the kids inside this system, who don’t have the benefit of experience in other systems, are unmanageable. The poor kids don’t have any choice but to give up on actually learning stuff and comply with the learning pantomime.