Education Official Says Bad Teachers Can Be Good For Students 279
Zenna Atkins, the chairman of the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), has raised some eyebrows by saying that, "every school should have a useless teacher." She stresses that schools shouldn't seek out or tolerate bad teaching, but thinks bad teachers provide a valuable life-lesson. From the article: "... on Sunday Ms Atkins told the BBC that schools needed to reflect society, especially at primary level. 'In society there are people you don't like, there are people who are incompetent and there are often people above you in authority who you think are incompetent, and learning that ability to deal with that and, actually surviving that environment can be an advantage.'"
Re:Not real life (Score:3, Informative)
My managers have told me "In our company, when we give you a 5 for your assessment that really means it's a 10. Because if I was to give you a 10, then you should be doing my job. If my boss was to give me a 10, then I should be doing my boss' job. You understand what I'm saying?"
And yeah, I'm serious! That's what they've told me (they = more than 1 manager I've had in this company). It's very sad.
And then in college, I asked a history teacher about the dates of when certain states/territories were obtained and she gave me the dates. But the big map that was hanging in the room didn't agree with her. So I asked her about the map and she was like "well I don't know then." I was like WTF! You're supposed to be teaching me exactly about this!
Finally, my experience has been that teachers are just like you and I: human! They forget, confuse and sometimes just plain don't know. One guy in particular said straight out in a philosophy class:
"You (students) are welcome to bring drinks, such as my coffee here (points to it) or water. Can have food in the room such as snacks, as long as you have a PhD in your name. And since I happen to be the only one with a PhD, then that means I'm the only one allowed to have food and drinks."
So, fast forward a bit... this teacher, who I take it as bragging because he has a PhD in Philosophy from Harvard, literally only shows every other class. Actually, he does show, to post a note. But it's usually before we get there so we don't see him. Maybe he sent a TA? Then, he grades everyone REALLY poorly. Even I who love philosophy do really bad. So in the end, the students who reallllly needed this class get screwed because there is no way they can pass it without a lot of exposure to what he was teaching already. But what pissed me off more than anything, is that he wouldn't answer a question I had. I won't get into the details, but he straight refused to say anything other than: "I am not that person, so I can not tell you what they would say/think/answer/consider/etc." Glad that PhD is working for him!
Re:I take it (Score:1, Informative)
we havent given close scrutiny to things like creation science lately
Yeah, lets wind ourselves up about 'creation science' which isn't even present in any schools that can be controlled by our legislatures. Lets NOT worry about grade inflation, the fact all our schools have far more than one bad teacher and that the curricula is watered down with NEA approved ethnic and sexuality oriented psycho-babble head games, all of which IS present in actual schools. No, instead we'll fret about fools clinging to dreams of one day possibly making the slightest inroad into real schools despite everyone else.