I got a feeling that the OP was ranting due to her own hurt feelings rather than her daughter's. I failed to see anything out of the extraordinary that made the teacher deserve such harsh criticism. Yes she was harassed by some boys, I agree that sucks and the teacher should do something about it.
I have a baby daughter my self and can imagine the feelings if I heard she got harassed by her schoolmates, but then I would write a letter that focuses on THAT problem and not criticizing irrelevant points like the teacher's choice of programming language and overall teaching methods.
Also, if the girl truly has an interest in programming than years of encouragement is not even necessary, she will naturally be attracted by it and there is no parent who can stop her from it.
> I got a feeling that the OP was ranting due to her own hurt feelings rather than her daughter's. I failed to see anything out of the extraordinary that made the teacher deserve such harsh criticism.
The classroom culture is the teacher's responsibility. If a student is being harassed and has a hostile environment in this classroom, the teacher has failed in a serious way. Doubly-so when the harassment is driven by bigotry.
Then she should have kept the criticism relevant to that and not attacking the teacher's technical judgement:
"Visual Basic? Seriously?? Yes, I know I said I'm not writing to complain about your choice of programming languages, even though I'm still scratching my head on this one"
That only moves the focus from the real problem and creates a dispute that is not even relevant and necessary.
She provides almost zero details of the harassment and lot's of details on irrelevant things. How will that help the teacher to stop this from happening again if he is not told what went wrong?
It seems to me that some entrepreneurs in some masochistic way likes the stress. My memory of my last startup was pretty painful, but somehow can't help going at it again. Some of us may not be made for living a simple life, instead we need that freedom, that constant possibility to fuck it all up.
I have a baby daughter my self and can imagine the feelings if I heard she got harassed by her schoolmates, but then I would write a letter that focuses on THAT problem and not criticizing irrelevant points like the teacher's choice of programming language and overall teaching methods.
Also, if the girl truly has an interest in programming than years of encouragement is not even necessary, she will naturally be attracted by it and there is no parent who can stop her from it.