Guess I've got to relate a story.
My daughter, youngest of 3 kids, started the first year Kindergarten was attached to public school circa 1972. We went to the 'meet the teacher' the night before school's first day.
I proudly told the teacher I had already taught my daughter to read .
Boy! did she jump me about my teaching daughter the wrong way. She would be ruined for life.
Needless to say daughter loved to read, was in gifted classes.
Heh heh, Teacher, we’ll see.
Some educators get pretty full of themselves as the only possible valid guides.
Just before the school year started we recommended to the school staff that my daughter be placed in first grade instead of kindergarten.
The school assured us that there would plenty of activities to occupy her and that she would be quite content.
Six weeks later they suggested that we move her to first grade. It seems that the other students were spending their break times insisting that my daughter read stories to them.
I taught middle school mathematics, and was often challenging my kids in many different ways. Once, I gave an essay test (basically, EXPLAIN how to solve the problem with words, don’t actually do the work “the normal way”). I circles mistakes in their grammar and spelling, but only counted off for not getting the problem-solving steps correct. I was simply floored when the English teacher’s input was that spelling and grammar didn’t matter, as long as the thought was communicated. (And yes, she was a flaming liberal.)
It usually took me much longer to grade papers, but I would not force my kids to only learn how to do the problems "my way". I told them that there are always multiple ways to get to the right answer, and if one felt better or more comfortable or easier to understand, then use that one. Divide using the "cake method", the long division bar, multiply with fractions, whatever... as long as they have been introduced to each method, they could use any one that they wanted.
When grading, I always circled a wrong answer, and also circled where they made a mis-step. Again, it took much longer for me to grade than those who simply lined out any wrong answer and left it to the students to figure it out, but to me, that was the important part of the job. Any kid who cares about learning wants to know WHERE the mistake was, and how to not repeat it. Failing to find that mis-step and show it to them is simply ignoring a child that wants to improve, in my eyes.