Comment by borski
2 hours ago
The problem is that just like students, teachers are not all created equal.
My 3rd grade teacher wanted to fail me for “discipline” problems. In reality, she simply didn’t like me; I had no discipline complaints in other years.
I had undiagnosed ADHD and was gifted. She did not know how to deal with that, and actively disliked me.
Activist teachers are also a thing.
Crazy that such a load bearing job isn't better funded and more respected. Arguably the most important job in society and the level of respect, pay and to some extent training (at least a lot of places require a masters for what that's worth) is absolutely not commensurate with it's importance.
I dropped out of high school for the same reason, I had a teacher that failed me for writing an essay in three different styles of handwriting, and it just broke me. I wasn't a particularly good student, and I especially had a habit of just not doing essays, but I was making an effort to make it through the humanities and get my shit together, and to have that effort rewarded with a 0/100 just made me view the entire system as an absolute joke. I have a more nuanced take now, but it's still impossible to wrap my head around how comfortable people are with the education system here.
Society is made of people, people! You live in a society. Why do we not want the foundational atoms of it to be the best they can be? It just seems so obvious and simple and non controversial.
Multiple things can be true, because the goal is to optimize in aggregate.
- Some teachers are bad (and some students will have them)
- Overriding teachers with policies intended to control the bad ones impairs and burns out the others
Consequently, the reasonable path is somewhere in the middle. Create feedback systems designed to identify and weed out the worse teachers* and avoid overloading everyone else with outcome-less proscriptive policies.
* F.ex. it consistently amazes me that few systems, teaching included, regularly poll their end users (students or employees). "Well, people will give bad reviews if they get bad grades!" No shit, and somehow that's something we can't adjust for with a basic statistical analysis?
> it consistently amazes me that few systems, teaching included, regularly poll their end users (students or employees)
That completely ignores the social and political aspects.
You need to understand that the people who have the authority to do so do not want to document bad teachers, ever. Documenting bad teachers makes political waves and principals and superintendents never want to make waves because that impedes their ability to both do their job as well as get their next job.
Even if a teacher is very bad, they may be well-liked or be an important part of the community. If you attempt to remove that teacher, they may rally support from the community that can be extremely inconvenient.
Yep, and there is (rightfully) general distrust in giving teachers that much authority over students. Parents already have that authority, which is why a family environment conducive towards education is the most direct way to improve overall student outcomes. Trying to fix it in the school is bordering on pointless. In my country, boarding schools / boarding at another ...quieter... family member's house and attending a school near there was the most common solution among poorer people. Example: more-or-less sane mother sends off kid to uncles house during the school year to go to school and escape drunkard father. The kid visits on some weekends and most holidays.
Hard guidance is needed for kids. Hard guidance requires authority. So either you give teachers that authority which is very hard especially in diverse settings, or you make the family environment give better implicit and explicit guidance.
Now, the government will always attempt to solve it using the tools they have, which is the school, but it is destined to have vanishingly little success if at all.
Which country? (Curious)
Urban poor of India