1: A little pain is good for you.

The article states that "constructive, even painful feedback" is necessary. It conjures an idea of being hurtful to students. That's not the truth though. It means giving uncompromising honest feedback. When something is incorrect, it is stated as being incorrect, and a student can learn. That might be painful to the student's ego to hear that they were wrong, and is something we might tiptoe around now, but it's not being cruel, in fact it's being respectful to the student. It's not the pain that's good for you, it's the honest and constructive feedback, and if you feel some pain in hearing that, deal with it. But show me a study that shows that going around calling your students idiots who will never make anything of themselves will help them because it's painful and I will be surprised. In response, pain isn't good for you, honest evaluation is good for you, and you might feel pain when you hear it.

2. Drill, baby drill. The article mentions drills, but the real takeaway from the article is memorization. I'm in favor of memorization in terms of learning, because it allows you to conjure up simple methods without having to go through a process. When I want to know what 87 is, I know it's 56, I don't have to count on my fingers. When I need to think about what 8270 is, I know it's 5740 because I know 87 and 72 off the top of my head. That said, drills in school aren't necessarily the most effective way to memorize something. Many memory training things use very different methods, and we don't even try to teach our children with those methods. If we recognize that it's commitment to memory that is important and not drills, we could be more effective.

3. Failure is an option. This I absolutely agree with. But part of the problem we have is that we have institutionalized the fear of failure. You say that failure is a good thing, but the article pushes for antiquated systems where a failure can have all sorts of permanent social ramifications. From primary school where a student gets held back, to secondary school where grades determine your choice of post-secondary education, to university where a poor GPA can ruin your options. We rarely get an opportunity to learn from these mistakes without judgment. If a teacher allowed you to retake a test until you understood the material, that would allow failure to be an option, but we concern ourselves with the logistical problems of having students at different points in the curriculum. So we are afraid that if we fail we will not keep up, and once we stop keeping up, there's little point in trying any more. The class marches on, and even if we learn the things we failed the first time around, that test is already taken.

4. Strict vs. nice is again honest vs. dishonest. A strict teacher says "Do this assignment by this date and I will grade it for you." Then they accept the assignment on that date and grade it. A student who is late completing the assignment asks the strict teacher to submit it late, and the strict teacher says no. The "nice" teacher will say yes. The strict teacher was honest and forthright in their request. The nice teacher wasn't. When you're dealing with someone who honors their word, it's easy to know what is expected, and it's easy to respect them. When you're dealing with the nice teacher, you're a bit uncomfortable, why did you do the assignment on time when Jimmy handed his in late and didn't have anything happen? Then next time when you have an assignment due, you aren't sure if you have given your best work, (and you're afraid of failure), but you think maybe the nice teacher will let you hand it in late. You wait to finish it until it's late, and then you're uncertain whether the teacher will still accept it, and eventually it just goes unsubmitted altogether. With the strict teacher, you know they will only accept it tomorrow, so you do what you can. Or you don't. Either way, you know the consequences.

But what that gets twisted into is an idea that a strict teacher has to be dishonest, and tell the students they are worse than they are. That they have to hurt them to make them feel better. Again, I don't think it's the hurt that helps, but the honesty and integrity.

The article gives an anecdote about coddling a child in first and second grade vs. a third grade teacher that tells them to get to work. This isn't really a matter of strictness the way the rest of the point is. It also has not a lot to do with learning in the traditional sense, but more of learning in a social sense. The big takeaway in this is still integrity. When you make a reasonable request to the class, and a child in the class has an issue with it, do you modify that request? You you make things lighter for them. If you do, you're undermining your own integrity. You're saying "What I asked you to do wasn't important, so if you have a problem with it, you can make me change it." It's hard to hit a moving target like that.

5. Creativity can be learned.
Creativity is only as useful as the student's ability to express it. A problem with this model is that an excellent student doesn't have an opportunity to demonstrate any special talent. Neither do they have much ability to do so in the current system. Does that mean that it's better to regress to a point of rapping knuckles with yardsticks and ineffective drills?

6. Grit trumps talent.
"Grit" is a person's ability to continue to work consistently. When a person gives up on something, it's often because attempting to continue working on it causes unbearable stress, or there's an absolute indifference to it. The stress is going to come from a fear of judgment from failure. Something is hard, that means we're recognizing that we might make a mistake, that we don't understand it fully and if we ask for help or show something incorrectly we will be ridiculed. This means we barely dip our toes into things we struggle with, and don't get interested. How will moving to a culture of fear and pain teach students to be optimistic?

7. Praise makes you weak.
Yes, praise in general is pretty pointless. It's vapid and hurtful, because it makes students seek more praise. Instead, if a student is left alone, they're going to feel intrinsic motivation from the actual learning. There's an element of overjustification effect that takes place.

That said, the absence of praise doesn't mean that a culture of insults and diminuation should take its place

8. Stress makes us strong
Not really. I just strictly disagree with that. Dealing with stress makes you strong as you learn to deal with it. Being under stress is harmful. Being put into a stressful class will not make you strong because you can't do anything about it. Sort of the difference between a good exercise regimen where you damage your muscles and then let them heal, and a situation where you're constantly overstressing them and never have an opportunity to have a break. One will build strength, the other can cause long-term damage.

The Mr. K in the article is finally described as cold, unyielding and kind of scary. These are not bad qualities. Being Cold just means he's not likely to yield to an emotional request, unyielding indicates he's going to stand by his word. Like I mentioned earlier, honesty and integrity is a good thing, and he embodies these characteristics. Being scary is a bit of a wild card, it means he's causing anxiety in the students, that's probably not great for performance, but it probably leads them to not question his requests, which just leads to a stronger understanding of his expectation.

The Mr. K character in the story doesn't embody the sort of things that the individual points seem to.

You can be a kind and fair teacher, you don't have to lose your temper, you don't have to yell, you don't have to tell your students their work is terrible when it's average. You don't have to embarrass them in front of their peers.

But you will be more effective if you are honest, trustworthy, and challenge your students to excel. If you structure your class so that the student is graded based on how well they know the subject rather than how few times they have made mistakes. If you provide the resources that a student needs to improve themselves when they've fallen behind the pack, and if you provide the resources that a student needs when they've excelled beyond the pack.