"Feelings" Education---It Starts in Ed School

April 16, 2010
By Mary Grabar

The teenage girl standing with her father in line behind me at Kroger was clearly annoyed with her teacher. "I just gave her some b.s.," she said.

They were discussing the school day, and a writing assignment. Her father asked her what the topic had been and between loading my items onto the conveyor belt I gathered that the assignment had involved a journal entry regarding feelings about family and living arrangements.

"Well," her father replied, "you could have answered that with fewer than twenty words: 'My parents went through a ten-year custody battle and now I live with my father.'"

"Yeah," the daughter replied, "she has no business knowing about that stuff."

I cheered her on inside, for her resistance to an intrusive English teacher. the rest image by APDK