Watching my youngest, who has loved school her whole life, start to hate it.
Her reasons, she does not think the teachers care about learning. She wants to learn and she does not feel like the majority of her teacher care about learning at all. They just want kids to copy down what is written, read the book, and then do the work at home, and the homework work load is absolutely oppressive. She always does well, always gets good grades and the amount of work they send home has made us have to remove her from a youth symphony she enjoys and cut back on her martial arts that she wants to go to and we are now having to consider stopping some of her music lessons that she absolutely loves. She is advanced in math, English and social studies and as well as piano, viola and violin, heck her youth symphony is still trying to get her back, and we would love to have her go back, and she would love to go back too, There are piano competitions she wants to join, but no time to practice the pieces she would need to play.... the homework is absolutely stifling.
And her thoughts about the teachers, from what I ran into on parents teacher night, and from what I am hearing from her, are not far off from the truth. There are a couple that seem to actually care about their students but some of the others I doubt care at all...and one...depending on his answer to a question today.... I am ready to go to battle with. I understand teaching is a rough job, there are a lot of teachers in my family, but this guy is the first I have run into where I am outraged that my tax dollars go to his salary so he can spend his day sitting on his back side NOT teaching the children it his class. Most of the kids in that class go to my youngest for help because he is not teaching them ANYTHING! and what she can't answer, she asks my wife or myself. She is doing more teaching in that class with the help of my wife and myself than the guy that is getting PAID to teach it.
It is enough for my wife and myself to look into private schools, and there are a few in my area that are very good. I have never been big on private school over public, but this school. compared to some of the private schools I have been looking at, is making me change my position.