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This was in response to a question asking why teachers can't admit that there are bad teachers "out there." I've been on here arguing in favor of teachers pretty vociferously, so this is certainly not a teacher-bashing episode, but I wanted to present a perspective that may be a little less defensive than other posts I've put up. I've edited it a little, too. :-)
I've had the opportunity to see the profession from a student's view, from a teacher's view, and from a student teacher supervisor's view. I would be lying if I said that the majority of schools don't have a single weak teacher. If there are 50 or 60 teachers in a school, there are probably a few weak ones in there, and probably at least one bad one. You can say the same thing about any profession. In case you're wondering, I define "weak" as someone who is not very effective but wishes to be, and "bad" as someone who is ineffective and does not care. By "effective," I mean someone who is generally able to relate the material to the students who are willing to learn it, and to inspire some unwilling students to be willing.
The reluctance of teachers to give any ground stems from critics who completely blow the number of weak/bad teachers out of proportion, and the resultant policies and public opinions that follow the critics. Teachers get blamed for the failures of teachers, but also for the failures of school systems, of administrators, of budgets, of enforced curricula, of the government "reform" of the year, of parents, and of students. All of those things do cause failure in the classroom. Sometimes you have incompetent elected school boards (for example, morons who run for office solely to get creationism into science classrooms). Sometimes you have bad administrators - like the ones who put pressure on teachers to pass the star athlete or simply change his grade themselves, or the ones who give teacher evaluations based on how well they get along with the teacher, not the teacher's performance. Many times, the budgets don't give you enough money to do the job. Sometimes the curriculum is overdone with emphases on minutiae and doesn't allow for flexibility. Sometimes the government reform of the year is made out by morons who push models that have already failed (e.g., NCLB, which failed in TX but was covered up). Sometimes there are parents who back their kids against teachers no matter how horrible their kids are. And sometimes you just have students who are lousy, not because they're dumb, but because they don't buy into school at all, they don't give a damn, or they're immature. Cold, hard fact: a substantial percentage of students cannot be taught because they are determined not to learn. Who generally takes the public rap for education, though? Teachers.
I think a good analogy is a hotel front desk clerk. Anyone who's worked as a hotel front desk clerk knows what I'm talking about. If something goes wrong with maintenance, housekeeping, online reservations, etc., etc., the front desk clerk gets yelled at by the patrons, even though the clerk was not at fault. Likewise, any time something goes wrong with education, the first target is the teachers. This is not meant to imply that teachers are never at fault. It is meant, however, to say that teachers are often faulted for circumstances beyond their control.
There are a good number of posters on DU who target teachers, and this is a progressive website! I am certain it is much worse on Free Republic, where most would probably like to get rid of public education entirely because they think the resultant socioeconomic/intellectual caste system would be a small price to pay to get their grubby little hands on a few tax dollars. This means that the moderate position is probably somewhere in between the mixed support teachers get here and the total witch hunt that I am sure exists on FR. Is it any surprise that teachers get defensive and don't want to give any ground or admit any weaknesses at all?
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