School district employee criticizes teacher for calling her 2nd grade students 'kids': 'Are you teaching kids, or are you teaching scholars?'

Gimme a break.

If you tell a child that he's a scholar enough times, will that actually make him do his homework on time? I'm not an expert on pedagogy, but I'd bet that telling kids that they're genius academics all the time does very little to motivate them to be good students. If anything, it might make them feel like they don't have to try that hard, because they're scholars and academics just by existing! I kind of doubt if that's true. I'm not one of those boomers who think that participation trophies will make every kid think he's going to be Lebron James. I think kids have a better sense of their athletic prowess than other kids do, because sports are objective. You can watch an MLB-bound kid and know he's MLB-bound compared to you, the average little league 3rd baseman. With academics, it's slightly different. You don't know exactly what grades your classmates get, so it's harder to be able to tell who is objectively smarter by just being in the same classroom as your peers. Some exceptionally quiet kids are secret geniuses that their teachers can't figure out, let alone the other kids in their class.

I do think that kids get an inflated sense of self from being told they are academically gifted, and it's probably best to treat slightly above-average kids the same way you treat average kids. The teacher in this story was just trying to treat all of her students like regular kids, and she got shut down by a higher up at her school.

via Getty Images (Unsplash+)

_{A teacher instructing a class of kids (oops, I mean scholars) on scientific matters.}
_{Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.}
"Are you teaching kids, or are you teaching scholars?"

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_{Two Buddhist monks studying a text in a temple, something that a class of 2nd graders probably could not handle at their developmental stage.}
_{Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.}
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via Getty Images (Unsplash+)

_{Kids rock climbing together, something that scholars don't necessarily do.}
_{Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.}
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