If your child is failing a school subject, what are the best ways to help? Tutoring? Discipline? Other?

I'd say it depends on why they are failing. While tutoring is clearly what needs to be done in most cases, if during your tutoring you find the kid knows his/her stuff and just isn't trying or participating in class then discipline is needed. It's one thing for your child not to understand a subject and fail by no fault of their own, and another to act out and just not do well because they don't care about school.

I believe that tutoring is a better solution than discipline. There may be a reason that they are not getting the information the first time and bringing in someone that can help them retain the information will be a much better solution. This is also one way that a person can see if the child is just unfocused and maybe playing around in class instead of learning.

That might be a reason for discipline if that turns out to be the case. A tutor would at least give him a fair chance before discipline begins.

I would first talk to my child to try to figure out why they were failing. There are all kinds of reasons your child could be failing and to help them you would have to know what the problem is. In my case, with my son, it would be his lacking to apply himself and in that case disipline would be my course of action.

The first step to help a child, is to identify the problem. The best teaching method for one child, may not be the best for another. My daughter is a graduate from the University of Michigan, with a degree in Science and a major in Chemistry.

She is pretty heavy in Math also. She currently does research for BASF. Anyway, a couple years ago she began tutoring part time, while she works on her Masters.

She has worked with a couple dozen kids. Everyone of them has seen there Chemistry and Mat scores improve. My daughter explained that the way some teachers are explaining processes, etc.To the kids is pretty complex.

The kids just are not understanding it, and at times teachers are not willing to put the extra time in with a student to help them. She tries to simplify the teaching process and has been very successful. All of the students she has tutored have passed, most of them with As or Bs.

She noted that her lone exception, a young lady who received a final grade of C, just refused to do any homework, and her parents even though spending money on a tutor were only interested in her passing, not how much she knew, so didn't' demand that homework was done. My daughter has tutored both gh School and College students and it actual data indicates that a tutor is a verygood option. They can even help identify the problem, specially if it is a teaching method.

Remember that when hiring a tutor, a Mathematician or Scientist is more interested in understanding why something works and the best way to accomplish the task or improve the method. A Teach or Engineer usually only wants to know how to do it, so someties have trouble relaying the correctin ginformation or best methods of attaining the goal. A tutor may be the best option, specially if they can relate to the student and certainly once the problem has been identified as a teaching method.

I think tutoring and discipline. Tutoring obviously but discipline in having them study more and review it with you. Not discipline as in if you don't do better your not going out.

But hold them to so many hours of studying or missing a TV show until homework is done and reviewed.

I think tutoring is the way to go. Sometimes, bad behavior is there to mask a student's inability to perform certain academic tasks. Say for example my daughter was playing around during reading time.

I could discipline her by making her read more or something like that (she's only 2 so this is a hypothetical) which would probably make her dislike it even more. The reason she could be playing around is because she has a reading problem such as dyslexia or a vocabulary problem in that she doesn't know enough words that she is reading to be able to keep the information in short term memory. When someone has to constantly look up words or doesn't know a definition and just passes over the word, then the overall meaning gets lost.

She doesn't know how to help herself and she knows that she can't do the work as others are doing, so instead she plays around. Punishments wouldn't work but getting to the bottom of the issue would. Maybe the student is bored with the work because it's going to slow.

Some very bright kids get bored with school work because many teachers teach to the middle. So an understanding of the reasoning behind the lack of focus. Of course, it could also be because the child prefers to only read about skateboarding or dinosaurs and the classwork isn't about that.In which case, trying to find ways to get the child excited about other topics might be helpful.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.