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.'"
I had a teacher like that... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not real life (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. And dealing with a bad teacher is NOT real life training for dealing with a bad boss.
In School, if you correct a teacher about something, if they're a bad teacher, they will tell you that you are wrong and that they are right to save themselves the embarassment. When I was in 7th Grade French Class (being Canadian, learning french is often encouraged), one student was utterly harassed by our teacher for saying things differently. This student happened to have French parents from France where the teacher was born and raised in Quebec, the big French speaking province of Canada. The differences in the language are about as much as you'd expect from Southern States English and The United Kingdom Queen's English. After 2 parent teacher interviews, the student was pulled from the class by their parents, and the French teacher still holds that job to this day, never having gotten a reprimand. I might also point out that after 3 years with this French teacher, I only know how to count to 29 and can barely decipher any french text I come across for some semblance of meaning. To be honest though I never had much interest in learning French, either way, I hated that teacher.
Also, my Girlfriend has an English Prof at the university who believes that no student could ever earn an A+, only English majors could earn an A-, and any other student could only get a B+ as their best grade. My girlfriend, a history major and being 0.02 Grade points from making the deans list (which I think was like a 3.8 or something GPA), was very upset to learn this. Her last paper, which earned a B-, had no writing on it to suggest any feedback or errors. It was also editted by 5 English Majors and 2 other friends of hers, so she was pretty confident this would be the booster to her grade. She went on to Appeal her grade which was bumped up to a B+ (thus making the deans list), though there was still no explanation why she didn't garner an A. *** Luckily this university offers students a chance at the end of the year to evaluate the teacher. As far as I know, everyone has given a poor review and are praying they get fired.
As for "Real Life" in the working world? I have found a boss finds the "No" man 5 times more valuable than a "yes" man. If my boss proposes something I don't like, and I tell him why, he has a chance to reconsider, or defend his point by discussing things I might have missed. This is the mark of a good employee - not one that sits there and goes "Yes sir right away sir" everytime an order is barked at them. The School system should NOT be pumping out mindless drones. If there is any reason to have a bad teacher, it's to teach kids to stand up for themselves when they know they are right.
*** As a side note, apparently this teacher didn't show up for 3 classes (without a note or explanation as to why they were absent), and for 2 of them, the prof put on a movie and left.
I disagree... (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a guidance counselor tell me to "cry her a river" when I told her taking night classes at a local college and a full schedule at high school and working two jobs was too much for me, and I wanted to only go to high school only half day (a program fully supported by the school district, or at least supposedly so...) This is to say nothing of the quality of some of the teachers and classes I had to take. The school did everything they could to sabotage my academic career at every turn. I found out some years later after some academic success that they have been using my name as an example of the caliber of student that they could produce. Did I learn some sort of life lesson? I guess so. But it wasn't worth it, and I wouldn't wish that kind of nonsense on anyone. It was years ago, but my blood still boils thinking about it.
Re:Not real life (Score:2, Interesting)
I got bad grades in math through high school, not for lack of decent teachers. But, the experience left me with the notion that I was bad at math. In reality, I was bad at doing homework. Almost ten years later, I went back to school and ended up in a precalculus class with an abysmal teacher. She made mistakes and got angry at people who corrected her, she insisted that she was right in the face of irrefutable evidence. So, I got angry and sought to prove her wrong. I relentlessly toiled over my homework, and came to learn the material well enough to fight her (and eventually report her behavior to the dean). This anger evoked a passion for rigor, and now, I'm working towards my PhD in math. So yeah, shitty teacher actually had a great effect on me. But to this day, I feel sorry for the rest of the students who were merely confused by what they saw.
Re:Not real life (Score:4, Interesting)
As you can imagine, I had GREAT!!!!!!!! experiences in school!
Re:I disagree... (Score:2, Interesting)
The only thing the crappy teacher taught me was that I didn't want to be a teacher.
I would have rather learned History from her, frankly.
Re:Not real life (Score:4, Interesting)
As for "Real Life" in the working world? I have found a boss finds the "No" man 5 times more valuable than a "yes" man.
Then you've been pretty lucky. I've had plenty of horrible bosses who could not improve themselves and set aside their hangups no matter how bad things were going. They tend to have this world view that people are by nature lazy fucks who must be motivated by threats and fear. Even when faced with disaster, knowing that a particular direction or action would get us all fired, they couldn't help themselves and did it anyway because that was what they knew. Some uppity minion's idea threatening to make the boss look stupid? Squelch it! The idea is so good it might save the situation? Squelch it anyway! Any minion that dares say "no" is fired immediately. Snow job not working? Try a bigger, better, faster snow job! Ragging on the engineers and scientists not getting results? Rag on them harder! "The beatings will continue until morale improves." Demand heroic work hours, give them crap about how everything is all their fault and scream about what idiots they are for being unable to realize the boss's glorious visions, mete out punishments that take the best minds away from crucial work to do drudgery (wouldn't do for them to show up the boss, and such a move heads that off under the pretext of punishment, and if the punishment also involves denying them some pay over a technicality, even better), threaten to fire them all, etc. Of course none of that ultimately worked. You might think everyone would just walk if it was that bad, but until you've been in that situation, it's hard to appreciate just how very hard it is to walk away from a paycheck. A few do walk, but most stay on until very close to the end.
dealing with a bad teacher is NOT real life training for dealing with a bad boss.
Too right! Saw plenty of bad teachers, but the worst were pikers compared to bad bosses under intense pressure. Teachers don't have the same power. By firing people, a boss could set in motion a chain of events that end in ex-employees losing their cars, houses, and marriages, not to mention their credit ratings. And the bosses know that, and make sure the minions fully appreciate that too, the better to terrorize them into doing their "best". In those cases where they don't have a hold like that, they'll try to get one by bullying or sweet talking the employee into being an idiot and giving them just such a hold, all the while overlooking the inherent contradiction in wanting idiot behavior on something like that, but super genius brilliance in pursuit of the narrowly defined directions desired. No mere teacher can do that to a student.
Re:I take it (Score:1, Interesting)
Ah, you drink the kool aid I see. There is no derivation of the standard model from string theory. There are no testable predictions of string theory. Hell, it isn't even a theory, at best it's a conjecture and some would argue random-ass guess. You can't claim "My theory is E=mc^2 + Unicorns" and claim that it's just as valid as Einstein's work because we don't know if unicorns exist or not - by Occam's Razor E=mc^2 wins that one every time.
In fact, there is no derivation of any known physics from Sting theory. It was an attempt to explain the strong nuclear force that failed, found to have a spin-2 particle which by numerological reasons we decided must be the graviton, and has more free parameters than the number of particles in the observable universe. As such it can NEVER make a prediction since somewhere in the landscape there will be at least two, and probably 10^100, different string theories which all match the observable data but have different outcomes for anything new. Thus is is not falsifiable and not a theory.
Disclaimer: I'm a string theorist. But I happen to be honest about what I'm doing - hoping that on a wing a prayer we get some control on our 'landscape'. Until then we really haven't got science at all.
On the plus side, it is VERY handy for calculations in certain contexts (AdS/CFT for example) and may in fact turn out to be nothing more than a really useful tool. If so, I'd still call it a success, but I wouldn't call it a theory of everything or anything remotely so grandiose.
Re:I take it (Score:2, Interesting)
Some bad teachers also mentally scar the kids, from saying they will have no future and never amount to anything (one of the worst things said to a student) to being overly aggressive, yelling, poking at the chest of a primary school student helping to cause great anxiety that stays with them well into childhood.
1 bad apple can mess up a child even with simple meaningless talk and banter because children don't have the capacity to understand hurtful words like that. (Heard how bad it's affected cousins, friends, even in highschool). Tell a student something like that and some will fight to prove you wrong, but many will simply be hurt and give up. When a person of authority, who's meant to know their shit, tells you that you won't amount to anything a lot of kids will believe it. A little bit of encouragement truly goes a long way.
But of course the difference is between being a useless teacher, and a true bad teacher.