Oh yeah, I meant to address that part, actually! [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img] (I was in a hurry to get out the door.)
I think the way parents can help kids who get the occasional low mark, or have a teacher do something stupid is for the PARENT to validate the kid's project. So, if the teacher gives you a crappy mark for an essay that you feel you did really well on, for some unjust reason such as not agreeing with the stand you took in it, then I figure it's my job as a parent to look over my kid's work, and if it needs work to tell my child that, and if it really is a good job, to tell my child that too, that sometimes life is like that, that teachers aren't perfect, they won't always see eye-to-eye with you, and that you need to value your work for its own sake, not for the sake of the mark someone else gives it. Because everyone isn't always going to like your work, no matter what. And in the case of factual errors, everyone in your life isn't going to recognize when they're wrong either.