Parent-School Complaint Letters

By Richard (Age 13.5, Chinese International School)

Editor's note: The following letters were written in response to an incident where a teacher told a 6th-grade student to "go shoot yourself." 


Dear Mr. Headmaster,

I am shocked at the behavior of one of your school staff, who apparently said to my son a few irresponsible, uncalled for and most extremely rude words. "Go shoot yourself." I mean, really? We as the parents are paying the school fee to go to your school, just to have our child abused and put down? My wife and I are shocked, and as for my darling son, I believe he is in a state of trauma. His self-esteem (or whatever is left of it after one of your teachers cursed at my child in such a vulgar manner) has not skyrocketed, as it should have done going to such a privileged school, but crash-landed in such a way that in its current state its dim light could be compared to that of a dwarf sun. To have (may I repeat) one of your teachers, who has been teaching at this school for 32 years so maliciously injure my child - well, it will not stand. I am suggesting - demanding - that you fire such an undisciplined "member of staff" or at least suspend such an evil mind from pay for at least one month. He is the snake and my child is the innocent mind of Adam, exploring the garden until it came in contact with such a dark and crippling soul. If such reprisals are not made, we shall bring the hurt down on you. This would, admittedly, make news.

                   Mr. and Mrs. Annoying

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Annoying,

I see your reason for frustration! However, let us not come to any dire situations or conclusions yet. It is to my understanding that one of our staff has offended you and possibly distressed your child. However, I personally beg of you to see it from the school's point of view. The teacher was under a lot of pressure and the whole class in general was being loud and hard to handle. Everyone has their fragile twig known as patience, and although some are made of finer woods than others, eventually they both snap and situations like such will arise. And when such situations arise, it is the duty of the staff and the parents to duly and patiently support the school. This school is well-known and I as the headmaster intend to keep its reputation skyrocketing. Including the media and press on this issue is really unnecessary and I urge you to reconsider your actions. I am sure that a compromise can be made. For example, how about moving your child into a different class? It is understandable that the child might feel certain pressure when working with someone who has so recently undermined them and like I said, a compromise can be made. The possible solutions that I have suggested cannot possibly scrape on the surface of the great universe of solutions, remedies, and compromises. Think about yourself. Everyone loses their temper sometime, and it's up to everyone to control it. Please reconsider your actions.

Mr. Headmaster 

Teacher vs. Student

By Cheung (Age 15, Chinese International School)

Teacher Frustration Guidelines:

Are you a teacher? Have you ever felt extremely frustrated and annoyed? All because of a student that misbehaved and started disrupting the class, have you wanted to shout all the profanities in the world at him, but didn't want to get in trouble? Well fear no more. With these guidelines you can vent out your frustration.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

The first thing you should do is to count to five and give students time to be quiet. For each second, over the five seconds you count, you should add one minute to the end of class. This would make the kids more disciplined and would become quiet quickly, because kids do not enjoy detention. If this doesn't work, then you can send an email to their parents every time they misbehave. If the parents don't care, which is not usually the case, you may report to the principal, and he will give the student a warning. If the student misbehaves two more times, the principal would publicly announce the misdeeds of this student and suspend him for three days. If further behavior continues, you can expel the student. This frustration guideline may not completely vent out your frustration, but it will make it so you don't have to deal with the student or students anymore.

The teacher, having said "go shoot yourself" to a 6th grader in this case, should get suspended for around three days. There isn't anything more the teacher should be punished for. The teacher may have been a bit harsh by verbally abusing the student, but this is all normal. This is because being a teacher is extremely frustrating. It is extremely frustrating to the point that even some teachers at my school need to be taken to the hospital because of stress. Since in this case it is a public school, it is already unfair for the teacher. It would make things even more unfair for the teacher if the school punishes them too harshly.

There are two scenarios for the dangers of letting this situation go. As the teacher is in America where it is perfectly normal to carry a gun, then it is quite easy for the child to shoot himself. Though I would like to stress that the child would only do that if he were an idiot, it is still dangerous. Letting this go may also result in other teachers doing the same because they think it is appropriate. The moment the teacher says it to a particularly sensitive child, then the child might take the teacher's word seriously. This is highly unlikely, though.

The other scenario is if the teacher were in Asia where it is perfectly normal to throw a few insults at an extremely misbehaving student. For example, like most of the people in our critical reasoning class, we have all gone through some sort of Amy Chua-styled training. We are either used to this kind of verbal insult, or would be able to tolerate it with no problem at all. In some cases, Asian students would brush verbal attacks off as an everyday routine, and even laugh at it. More importantly, it is illegal for civilians to carry guns or any kind of artillery, therefore the possibility of danger is close to nothing.

Teacher Rankings (Part 2)

By Christopher (Age 13, Chinese International School)

Should there be a teacher ranking system for Hong Kong? No, I do not agree. Hong Kong would be using the same system as Los Angeles. This is not a very effective system and I strongly go against it.

The rating system currently in place is a system where there would be a standardized test that every student has to take. The teacher would then be rated by his or her students' progress or improvement. Therefore it's not really the teacher you are assessing but rather the students. This is unfair as 90% of standardized tests are beyond the control of the teachers. In the end, no matter how passionate or effective a teacher is, it's always up to the student's willingness to learn. Attitude is altitude.

Another major problem with this system is the message it is giving to all the teachers. As the teacher's career is at stake if they they get a bad ranking, they would have to concentrate on the test scores. Tests do not determine how good a student is. You can't have a student great at memorizing but terrible at critical thinking. Einstein always said that creativity is the key to every genius. All these rankings would just encourage quantity of work from students rather than quality.

This is also degrading the teachers, taking away the love and passion for teaching and turning it into a system where the only thing that matters is your rank. This ranking is clearly disrespectful to teachers. Their job is to teach the younger generation so their knowledge could be passed on. Now the only way to becoming a teacher is to drill and kill the students rather than teaching the love of learning.

Although you may say that this ranking system would tell teachers whether they need to improve or not, this still does not mean that the teacher would know how to improve or what to improve.

In conclusion, the ranking systems need to be changed into a more effective system rather than looking simply at the students' scores.

Teacher Rankings

By Albert (Age 12.5, Canadian International School)

In Los Angeles, there is a new system for ranking teachers. The Los Angeles Times ranks the teachers by how well the students do on a test. The Times published the rankings in the newspaper and most teachers were insulted and couldn't figure out how test scores could determine how good a teacher is. I think this is a very unfair and disrespectful way of ranking the teachers and it should be stopped. This is because the student may not have studied and got a bad grade, thereby affecting the teacher's ranking and reputation.

This is insulting for the teacher because if the teacher has a low rank, he/she might be teased, bullied, and his/her students might even have no respect for the teacher. It also insults teachers by showing the public how bad or how well they teach. It might even get them fired from their job because of the low rank. It will also lower the teacher's reputation and no one will like the teacher.

Another reason this is a bad idea is because learning is more than just test scores. It is also learning about how to live after graduation. If the newspaper rated the teachers on exams, the learning would be based on exams and memorization because the teacher would be so eager to do well on the ranking and avoid being insulted and disrespected. It would also make the quality of learning poor, despite the good grades on the test, because the students won't really understand the content.

The main reason that this is a bad rating system is that it is unfair. If the teachers teach the students with all their heart and soul, but the students don't study or just didn't do well this time, the teachers get blamed for it when it is really the student's fault that they got a bad mark. The teachers will be unfairly judged because 90% of the student's test mark comes from the student, not from the teacher. The other 10% might be help from the teacher or some tips, but it is mainly the student who determines the test mark. If the student didn't understand what the teacher taught, it is the student's job to get help, so the test score should be blamed on the student instead of the teacher.

On the other hand, it can help improve teaching quality because the teachers will be motivated to do better and not get insulted. But most teachers will be so insulted, even the ones who did well on the ranking, that they will most likely try to stop the Times from doing this because it is unfair.

Overall, I think this is a very bad system for rating teachers, who don't know and don't want to be rated in this very unfair way. I think that it would be much better if the Times rated the teachers based on what the students think of the teacher and what the principal thinks of the teacher. It would also be better if the Times told the teachers that they were rating them.