My oldest son was exceptional in school. He was a straight A student and took a significant number of Advanced Placement classes in high school, for which he was granted college credit. One such class was AP European History. Needless to say we were a little concerned when his grade report showed all A’s and a D in AP European History. My son told me he had nothing but A’s in the class and the D was because he’d turned in his semester essay one day late. Because it was a day late, the teacher had torn it up and thrown it away and given him a flat zero grade. Since that was a significant part of his overall grade it dragged him down from an A to a D. After hearing this I made an appointment to meet with the teacher. I knew where things were headed the instant I met the man. And I use the word man loosely. He was a young punk. He told me that there was no excuse for turning in a paper late and any student doing so should be punished. I told him I agreed with that, in principle, but the issue I had was in the degree of punishment. I told him I can see lowering his grade on the paper a notch for being late. But throw it away and give him a zero? The teacher responded in a very snotty tone of voice and said “Mr. Stone, it seems you obviously know nothing about how things work in the real world. Everyone has obligations and we are expected to meet them. Being late is not acceptable.” I just stared at him while my blood pressure soared. After regaining control of myself I asked him if he had a deadline for turning in his grade reports each semester. He said “Yes, or course, and I’m expected to do it”. I said “Yes, but if you’re a day late, do they tear the grade reports up and refuse to pay you for the entire semester?” He immediately launched into a tirade that I simply walked out on. Well, I appealed to the school, but they refused to do anything about it. My son was able to recover from the grade, and it only lowered his final GPA a small amount. The only good that came out of is was hearing the next year that this teacher had been let go after multiple complaints of abusive behavior toward his students.