Our daughter has sent e-mail from Arizona, where our eight-year-old grandson is starting the third grade.  In it she cites some messages that have been sent home by his teacher.

Our daughter reports that "under spelling she [the teacher] mentions that if the children are having trouble with the standard spelling words (this week they are camp, felt, last, send, next, best, went, hand, stand, and past), she will shorten the list and have them do 'Special Spelling' words.  This week, the 'Special Spelling' words are:  the, of, and, a, and to."  The teacher writes that bonus words will "also help their spelling avilities [sic] for third grade."  OK, we all make typos occasionally, but for a teacher to do so in a message sent home to parents – a message about spelling, of all things – hardly inspires confidence in the teacher's "avility."  And a is a 'special spelling' word for third graders?  What is "special" about it, except that any third grader who can't answer the question "Johnny, how do you spell a?" without laughing needs to be immediately referred to a specialist to check for brain damage (along with, perhaps, the teacher who asks the question).

That's not all.  The teacher assures parents:  "Your child will be reading at his/her ability level and allowed to progress at their own rate."  (I assume that, while in college, the teacher also "progressed at her own rate" and never got to the lesson about the proper use of pronouns.)  Under "Writing," our daughter reports that the teacher says:  "We will also do poetry and creative writing on a regular schedule implementing the six traits; ideas and content, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency and conventions."  (They will not, obviously, cover such conventions as punctuation, for the teacher never progressed to that level either.  And dare I ask whether "sentence fluency and conventions" is one "trait" or two?)

"Be afraid," our daughter writes, "Be very afraid."  Indeed – and be utterly appalled that the school system entrusts the education of your child to teachers such as this.

The teacher ended her newsletter by assuring parents that they should feel free to contact her if they had any concerns.  "Where do I begin?" our daughter asks.  I couldn't answer that.  What good would it do to confront the teacher and say, "Yes, based on the errors in your own messages to parents, I am concerned that you lack sufficient knowledge to teach third graders"?  Where would that go – except possibly to a confrontation in the office of the principal, who would no doubt defend the teacher and would probably say that my daughter's concerns were inconsequential (assuming that inconsequential was in the principal's vocabulary).  After all, when our daughter was in school, we received messages from the principal that contained errors as distressing as those in the ones our daughter is getting from our grandson's teacher.

Even more disturbing than the errors themselves is the endorsement of "dumbing down" implied by the very concept of the "Special Spelling" list.  By all means, if a third grader cannot rise to the challenge of spelling send and went, let's lower bar and ask the kid to spell the and a.  Good grief!  It would be funny if the consequences weren't serious.  The early grades are the foundation for everything that follows.  Although it's almost a sure bet that the high schools will do everything they can to sabotage this foundation, the children are doomed before they get to high school if they haven't received any foundation at all.  Unchallenged and victimized by incompetence, they will slouch through school, learning only to hate it, and become what – teachers?

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ADDENDUM
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After this was published, I received some messages from individuals – mostly teachers – who express the view that I am being too tough on this teacher.  Not one teacher wrote to say that he or she was aware that the profession contains some incompetent people.

I have come to expect this reaction.  Years ago, when the local paper published a letter to the editor in which I commented on deficiencies in the schools, I received what amounted to hate mail from several teachers, much of it containing errors.  Among the charges they leveled was the ad hominem argument that I was ignorant.  One asserted that, since I teach at a community college, it is obvious that I don't know what I'm talking about because "you aren't smart enough to get a job at a real college."  At least those who responded to the above post were polite.

While I fully understand the noble urge of teachers to defend members of their profession, I can't help but wonder why teachers are so eager to deny the validity of the message and attack the messenger.  Is it because they are thin-skinned?  Is it because they are in denial?  Is it because even the good teachers don't want to admit that some of their colleagues aren't performing up to par?  The teaching profession is not well-served by those who indiscriminately defend or make excuses for incompetence.

College professors are not above reproof either.  Some of us have caved in to "grade inflation," thus lowering standards and contributing to the dumbing down process.  Others are in ivory towers, refusing to face reality.  I have colleagues who refuse to teach grammar in freshman composition because "students should know it by now."  Yes, they should, but they don't, and our obligation is to take up the slack.  We must meet our students where they are, not where we think they should be.  However, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't complain about the poor preparation of the students who are sent to us – a responsibility that rests squarely with the nation's primary and secondary school teachers.

Finally, a teacher, at any level of education, cannot afford to be thin-skinned.  We must be able to take criticism and benefit from it, just as we must be willing to criticize students so that they can benefit.  I expect some students who fail my classes to be critical of me, and, though most are ultimately responsible for their own failure, I need to examine regularly what I might have done differently to help each student learn and pass.  That doesn't mean I should coddle them and pass students who have not reached minimal levels of achievement.  It does mean that I need to be receptive to criticism of my methods, including criticism from students.  If I can't take criticism and learn from it, how can I expect my students to do the same?

If we want to improve education, we must not only stop coddling and making excuses for students; we must also stop coddling and making excuses for teachers.