Brown-nosing in School

While at my little brother's place this morning, I saw one of his child's 4th-grade essays. It shows that kids learn early that it pays to brown-nose. Teacher's comments are in red below; typed exactly as the child typed it:

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NO ROBOT TEACHERS - by Danny _____

We cant [can't] have Robot teachers. What if there's a mountfunktion [malfunction] and the robot gos [goes] crazy! Haveing [Having] real people teach you that [crossed out "that"] provids more jobs for people. [Add that elaborating sentence --> Which we all know is important!] If you are in the hospital a real teacher would call you a robot wouldnt [wouldn't] know your gon [gone]. Also you need $ to pay for parts for the robot you dont have to buld a teacher. This is why we cant have robot teachers. Imagin beaing traped in a class with a robot talking like this, ETFBUGFYAFNGDXFFYGDYUGFWAFRGTFSF, to you. Robot teachers wouln't give you party's. I SAY ROBOT TEACHERS ARE A PUNESHMENT! I would have a liveing thing for a teacher rather than a cold hunk of metal! [great language] Electronical teachers cost mony for the electric bill. This is why we cant have robot teachers. [You have great craft (3) Danny! Organization is also important though. Keep related arguments together and make new paragraphs for each different one.]

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I confess I cringed as I typed that because all the spelling mistakes were glaringly obvious and shockingly uncorrected. Then I realized when the teacher stopped correcting the errors: where it became clear the essay promoted human vs. electronic teachers.

Let's face it; the child was stroking the teacher's ego, and the teacher was lapping it up. Only one error was corrected beyond that point, otherwise the teacher was all praises. What does this tell the child? Brown-nosing is REWARDED! You can get away with shoddy work if you are good at brown-nosing your superior!

While I am a strong supporter of keeping jobs for people, and use real cashiers at supermarkets instead of the electronic ones, I find it ironic that an electronic teacher would NOT have an ego to stroke and wouldn't award that paper such a high grade but correct all errors instead.

I also believe we should have human teachers, but I wish they would show some moral backbone and teach the child the correct spelling/grammar instead of rewarding brown-nosing. I'm one of those "hard-ass" HR people that would like to see good spelling in cover letters, resumes and business correspondence instead of seeing employees and candidates try to smooth-talk their way into a job or out of poor work ethic.

-ESA