Comment by ninetyninenine
3 days ago
> he was angry, he marked it wrong.
That’s grounds for termination to me. Seriously. I would put this man out of a job and endanger the livelihood of him and his family for this kind of shit.
3 days ago
> he was angry, he marked it wrong.
That’s grounds for termination to me. Seriously. I would put this man out of a job and endanger the livelihood of him and his family for this kind of shit.
And if you CAN'T terminate because of admitted emotional grading, the system is too tightly captured by outside interests to the detriment of the client: the student and society.
A teacher is a professional entrusted with the most important responsibility society can offer: training and educating the next generation. It must adhere to the highest of professional standards and expectations.
That we don't pay enough to require that without reserve is a statement on our societal priorities, and disconnected from the expectations that should hold.
EDIT: clarification/word choice
Good watch - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_%22Superman%22
If you like watching right-wing educational propaganda, sure.
14 replies →
Agreed. Like this is fraud level bs that’s happening and people are voting me down.
I think it’s because this kind of stuff is common. People have done fraudulent stuff and they don’t agree it’s a fireable offense. Understandable. I still would endanger someone’s livelihood for this. Poor performance I would think twice and go through all measures possible to improve performance including putting them in a position where they can excel. Poor performance does not justify endangering the livelihood of a person or their family but this fraudulent bs of being angry and marking something wrong. That’s just malice.
It’s one question on a school exam, friend…
And at least the guy had the honesty to admit his irrationality when called on it. That, to me, reads more like coming to terms with his error in an edge case than it does a systematic campaign of maliciously frauding on the student
2 replies →
You seem very angry yourself, and willing to let that anger guide you to harming someone. Are you so different from that teacher? In fact, you might be worse, while he only gave a grade (one of many surely, likely to have no long term impact on life prospects or survival), you would have this man made homeless? Don't be so quick to assume a teacher (at least in the us) has been able to accrue sufficient savings to endure a ruined livelihood. Sounds very, very extreme to me. Might there be a more charitable interpretation of the words, might there be information that we don't have that would, say, humanize the human being you'd like to ruin? Maybe we could take the time to understand these impulses in ourselves and be the example we want rather than reflecting the pain we hate to ever increasing magnitudes.
13 replies →
There's a certain irony in your outrage at his failure to control his emotions, even as your own rage leads you to dream of hurting his family.
Is it rage?
If he murdered someone I would put him in jail and that will harm his family too.
There is a fine line between justice and compassion and if you never cross the line to enforce justice then you have corruption because nothing can be enforced because inevitably all enforcement leads to harm.
I want to apologize on behalf of the person whom you're responding to, as they misunderstood your point to an extent that makes it seem very unlikely that they'll be able to contribute to the discussion of where to draw that line.
To answer your question, let's note that holding a job in general — more so, a job which involves authority and power, and doubly so when it's over children — isn't a right, but a special privilege, which is given under certain assumptions, one of which is that the children entrusted into the instructors' power are to be treated fairly.
Consider that children's livelihoods depend on this assumption when they grow up, as grades affect which college they get into, which scholarships they get, which career they get to follow, how much money they make.
The teacher has violated this fundamental assumption; consequently, his teaching privileges must be revoked.
The damage to his family is out of scope; employment isn't a right, so starting a family is a risk that people take willfully.
Further, the teacher might be better off doing something that doesn't drive him mad. It's more healthy.
There's no mercy or compassion in keeping someone where they are miserable.
Side note: I changed my graduate advisor on my 5th year of graduate school, after trying for 3 years under someone who simply "didn't have the heart" to kick me out when it should've been clear we're not a fit for each other — something they had the experience to see, and I did not.
All "giving me a chance" for 3 years did was take 3 years out of my life, drag me into deep depression, and push me to almost dropping out of the graduate program.
After I started working with another advisor, I graduated in two years, writing a thesis we both were happy with (and getting a couple of publications out of it). I didn't stay in academia, but it was an option (I'm not tough enough for it, frankly, but that's a whole another conversation).
My point is: tolerating, out of compassion, an instructor who gets mad because their student understands the material very well may be similar to the compassion my first advisor had for me — which did more harm than anything else.
Being pushed out of a job one is miserable at, but can't quit on their own for whatever reason is, too, an act of compassion.
And I posit that this is what this "teacher" needs (aside from therapy).
I don't see this teacher ever being happy or excited to see a student that is so interested in the subject they teach that they understood something better than the teacher did.
But that's a prerequisite for being a teacher. Merely tolerating your students' excellence isn't enough — it's something, hopefully, a teacher should strive for.
We hope that a child taking a physics class at least has a chance of becoming a great physicist, i.e. a better physicist than their physics teacher.
But the chances of that are diminishing greatly if their physics teacher doesn't wish the same — i.e. doesn't hope that their students would shine brighter than they did.
And if that possibility drives them mad... to an extent where they'll willfully wrong the student in retribution...
...I can't imagine what it would take for them to do a 180 turn and end up being happy the next time they find themselves in this scenario.
Firing them seems like a win-win for everyone.
>There's a certain irony in your outrage at his failure to control his emotions, even as your own rage leads you to dream of hurting his family.
Wow, what bad take.
Are you willfully misinterpreting the parent commenter, or would you need some help understanding it?
Assuming it's the latter, here it is.
First, there's no outrage or rage. That's something you ascribe to the parent comment, and that's unwarranted.
Second, there's no dreaming of hurting [the teacher's] family.
The message was: it is important that this person should be relieved of teaching duties, with the full understanding of the gravity of such an action, as being fired from one's job in the US puts the livelihood of the person being fired at risk.
See, the person you're responding to is empathetic, because they consider the impact of what they wish — the teacher being fired — on the teacher as well as others (the teacher's family), and don't take wishing something like that lightly.
Most people would stop at "bad job, fire him", without contemplating what it means for that person.
The parent commentor did, and is saying that, as grave as the consequences are for the teacher (and, potentially, his family, if the teacher is the sole breadwinner), it is still necessary to remove them from teaching because harm to children and violating the trust we put in instructors is unacceptable, and the damage they do in their position is far greater than the damage that would be done by firing them.
This is a compassionate and composed consideration.
Oh, and there'd be no irony about the parent's response even if they were raging, as they were not talking about the teacher's failure to control their emotions.
The issue is hurting children, which isn't something the parent commentor is decidedly NOT doing.
Hope this helps.
>That’s grounds for termination to me. Seriously. I would put this man out of a job and endanger the livelihood of him and his family for this kind of shit.
Agreeing with you as a former instructor (who left academia for greener fields after completing the PhD).
I've had people cry on me in office hours because they come out with — quite literally — PTSD from instructors like the one we're discussing.
It's nothing short of psychological abuse of children, and it leaves lifelong damage.
It's worse than no instruction at all. I've had to have college kids unlearn things before I could teach them.
We've got to draw a line somewhere. I draw the line at actively traumatizing children.
That person should not be allowed to teach, period. We'd do both their students as well as themselves a huge favor by removing them from teaching.
By all indications, they'd be a happier person doing something else, where they wouldn't be driven "mad" by seeing that they've done a good job — which, for a teacher, means their students being proficient in the subject they teach.
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TL;DR: this teacher was driven "mad" by seeing that he's done a good job, and one of his students was really good in the subject.
Spare them from this pain.