I’m angry at this national witch-hunt in America, which stems from the self-esteem movement.
Teachers have a thankless job.
It is difficult and traumatic to deal with antagonistic parents and belligerent children, who feel they have the right to say or do anything they want including telling lies at home to avoid reading or doing homework.
In fact, instead of being recognized and praised in public for my accomplishments as a teacher, I was often under assault by parents and administrators for being too demanding.
- George Carlin says sociopaths have high self-esteem. Caution, Carlin uses vulgar profanity in this video clip – just in case you are easily offended by anything that isn’t politically correct.
If you are an American parent, how many hours of TV do your children watch daily? How many hours do they spend on the phone socializing or surfing on the Internet?
How many books and magazines are in your home? How many hours do you require your children to read each day?
Do you attend parent conferences [these tips might help if you haven’t been]?
Did you know that many American schools have homework Internet hotlines so you can see what the homework is for each of your child’s classes?
This information is usually sent home from school with your children, who are supposed to share it with his or her parents.
This is the end of my rant about education in America and why the Chinese do it better – at least for now.
Return to Speaking Out About Education – Part 5
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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iLook China 
“In fact, instead of being recognized and praised in public for my accomplishments as a teacher, I was often under assault by parents and administrators for being too demanding.”
Too demanding in what way ?
I wonder what the American parents would have said of my teacher who had more like boot camp with us. Haha
Too demanding in what way?
The way I graded and I stuck to it.
Workweeks for me and most English teachers were 60 hours minimum and could be as long as 100 hours since we take work home to correct. I corrected everything and graded according to my grading program. Often when an assignment was turned in that was wrong, I would grade it pointing out what was done wrong and request that the student correct the mistakes and turn the assignment in again.
The grading was weighted — for example:
Tests and quizzes would be 15% of the grade so students that did not do well with tests could still earn a B in the class. I also allowed students to come in at lunch and take the tests over if they failed. No student who failed a test ever accepted that chance. The kids hated to give up lunch or snack time or come in after school on their own to take a test over.
Homework would be maybe 30% of the grade
Class work would be 55% of the grade
Every assignment was worth points so a small assignment wouldn’t be as valuable as a big assignment. One assignment might be worth 10 points and a large essay 50 points while a huge book report was worth 200 points. If all class work added up to 10,000 points by the end of the term and a student only earned 1,000 points he or she would earn 10% of 55% = 5.5% of that grade category.
Important assignments like book reports and essays were allowed to be done over to correct serious flaws but only students who did the work were allowed to do the work over. Can’t do something over you never turned in. Only a few ever took advantage of this. Most never did the work over even if it meant FAILING the class.
Extra Credit assignments were always available. The few students, mostly Asians, who did the extra credit, studied for tests, did the class work and homework often earned more than 100%. I had a few who competed to see who would have the highest percentage. One student did everything and had more than 125% for her grade. She was Korean.
To pass the class and earn a D-minus was set at 55% of the work from all the categories. IF a student did all the class work and nothing else, he or she could still earn a D- minus.
To earn an A required a 90% total of all work from all categories.
Due to pressure from administration and parents, some teachers failed no students even if they only came to class once a week and did nothing, which meant a student could pass the class with a D- even if he or she was absent 90% of the time and did no work. Other teachers would lower the failure percentage so doing something as if 25% of the work would allow a student to pass.
I knew one teacher who passed out a sheet where students marked the grade they believed they should earn on each assignment. I stood behind him in line once when we were turning in our grade sheets at the end of a term. As we stood waiting in line, he finished his grading. The first student on his roster was given an A, the second a B, the third an A, the fourth a B and so on.
We were told once not to grade work with red ink pens since the kids would feel bad if they saw red ink marking their mistakes. I went out and bought more red ink pens and refused to use blue or green to show the mistakes. I even started to HiLight the errors so they would stand out more.