[MrFlaneur]

Yay or nay?

Anecdotes, testimony and Debate. Whadoyathink?

I've have bad teachers and good teachers - the distinction and affect on learning between them is pretty profound in my opinion.

Who was your favourite teacher, who was your worst. What affect, respectively, did they have on you? Should shitty teachers be sued for wasting years of your life?

Discuss.

[Shadizar]

It's less about the teachers, and more about the funding. One teacher can't sufficiently teach 30 kids.

[MechanicalSun]

	Originally Posted by MrFlaneur To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Yay or nay? Anecdotes, testimony and Debate. Whadoyathink? I've have bad teachers and good teachers - the distinction and affect on learning between them is pretty profound in my opinion. Who was your favourite teacher, who was your worst. What affect, respectively, did they have on you? Should shitty teachers be sued for wasting years of your life? Discuss.

No.
It's each persons responsibility to learn. Teachers are just the link between books(knowledge source) and students.
May the student feel he/she's receiving too few/incorrect information, they can always go to the books.

[stealthfighter]

I've been teaching for years and I've encountered students who are very much smarter than me. It all depends on individual differences really. Some people just have the innate desire to learn more and they do learn more even with limited exposure to formal education. Others are easily contented with what is fed to them and wouldn't yearn to learn anything more.

[Jinxu]

The best student has multiple teachers.

[Thinker]

No
I learn by myself at my own pace.
Teachers give me the rules (the syllabus and assessment variables).
I then go off and explore the subject, often much wider than the syllabus.

I recognise that not everyone is like this and that many have much more collaborative learning styles requiring much more interaction with a teacher.

[LifesEcstasy]

It think it's a cop-out. If your teacher is not good enough, find another one. Are you your teachers puppet, unable to think for yourself? Reaching your potential is your responsibility.

[CanrHoldLimes]

Maybe.

I'd say young impressionable minds, in very controlled environments like pre school and early teens teachers weigh in a lot, but later in life all you need is access, opportunity and the ambition to excel.
The teacher is even less relevant now with so much access to information.

[Shadizar]

	Originally Posted by CanrHoldLimes To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Maybe. I'd say young impressionable minds, in very controlled environments like pre school and early teens teachers weigh in a lot, but later in life all you need is access, opportunity and the ambition to excel. The teacher is even less relevant now with so much access to information.

Not necessarily, the teacher is still a good filter on what you're accessing; there's a lot of shit information out there posing as legitimate educational material.

[CanrHoldLimes]

	Originally Posted by Shadizar To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Not necessarily, the teacher is still a good filter on what you're accessing; there's a lot of shit information out there posing as legitimate educational material.

Yea, I think so in regards to a few things.
Others, I'm not so sure of, it seems most teachers are kind of there to just push 'the' agenda on the upcoming generation anyway, it's how we maintain the status quo.

[Autumnleaf]

	Originally Posted by Shadizar To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	It's less about the teachers, and more about the funding. One teacher can't sufficiently teach 30 kids.

American teachers say this is true. In the rest of the world it is not though.

As for the question. Good teachers are more helpful than poor teachers. Ultimately, its up to the student to decide how much they want to put into learning, and different students have different levels of difficulty and motivation for learning.

[Polymath20]

Western education has the locus of responsibility on the teachers to teach.

Buddhism says that it's up to the learner to learn and that any person (or even animals) can be a teacher if the student decides it is.

In that respect, you can argue that the Internet is a teacher, but it is up to the student to do the learning.

[Zedar]

You got a third option? It's not the type of question that 'yay' or 'nay' are useful answers for.

On balance, I say 'no'. A teacher is not solely and exclusively responsible for a kid's development. A good teacher - or a bad teacher - has an effect but it's rarely critical. I've a good Master's in my field yet I detest French because, though liking French when I started, I had a lousy French teacher further down the line. But, on balance, I surpassed my teachers' achievements.

Actually, your last question is rather fun: "Should shitty teachers be sued for wasting years of your life?"

There's an Australian girl trying to do exactly that, suing her school for failing to get her into the course of her choice in the college of her choice.


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[Boreal]

A good teacher will teach you to think. After that, the role of a teacher is to make sure you get the information you need for thinking and to smooth along the process.

[slug]

Yes. I was talented and interested in art, so I took art in high school sophomore year. The teacher was a crazy Chinese lady. We did all kinds of art projects, but the only grade was based on an artist test. She didn't teach us anything about any artists or what was going to be on the test. She just vaguely said to go to the library and learn about the artists and their painting styles (this was before the internet). She mentioned two or three artists names.

The test was multiple choice, I think about 30 questions. I just sort of guessed my way through it the best I could. When the test was graded, she read the scores out loud to the class and said I got an F! I found this very mortifying since I was always an A/B student, and what right did she have to embarass me in front of the whole class. So I was sure I had flunked art class.

When I got my report card, guess what - it said A! WTF!!!??? Needless to say, I never went back.

Fast forward to college. I spent 3 whole years wandering around in college trying to figure out what to do with my life. It was hard to decide because I was good at, and interested in, many things. Finally I ended up getting back into design (art). Then I needed to go to school for 5 more years because I had no art background and the program had co-op.

Yep, so this crazy chick essentially wasted 3 years of my life. The only good thing I can see about this is that since I was a very shy person at that age, it gave me some time to develop more socially and probably helped me withstand a very competitive environment.

[TheStranger]

The ability of a student need not be tied to that of his or her teacher. Regardless of that, a teacher is being paid to teach effectively, I would assume, so there seems to be an inherent responsibility there. How this responsibility should be structured is unclear, but some students require more time than the class time allows, and any teacher has time constraints themselves. This is where tutoring comes in, but adapting to peculiar learning styles or disabilities is still an imperfect process.

[Axion004]

No, a student is only as good as themselves. You don't need a teacher to spoon feed you information when you can open up a textbook and do the reading.

[FruitLoop]

My paragliding instructor (actually both of them) were complete idiots. Yeah they knew their stuff, but they were so locked up in their thinking they could never address any problem except from their own perspective. At least school teachers get training on multiple approaches that can be used for different personality types and learning styles.

[nwfn]

Having a great teacher is useful but not necessary for learning, at least for me. My little brother was turned off math by an awful teacher after being brilliant at it before, though. The impact of any teacher depends on individual experiences, proclivities and motivations.

[scorpiomover]

Yay and Nay. In my schools, some students were good in EVERY class, no matter the teacher. With some teachers, almost all the students were good students, who worked hard, and all did very well. The rest, were as you see normally.

[joliet]

	Originally Posted by Shadizar To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	It's less about the teachers, and more about the funding. One teacher can't sufficiently teach 30 kids.

I partially agree...but mostly disagree. It's almost completely about the teachers. If you're a crappy teacher with $20,000 to spend on your eight students every year, you're still going to be a crappy teacher. Teaching is an incredibly complex profession that requires you to be idealistic, rational, pragmatic, knowledgeable, and nearly self-sufficient because you need to model and bring out the potential and best of every student.

I do acknowledge though that classroom size is a significant factor in success. But, for the most part, I can't imagine anything more important than the teacher him- or herself.

---------- Post added 05-22-2012 at 09:37 PM ----------

	Originally Posted by Autumnleaf To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	As for the question. Good teachers are more helpful than poor teachers. Ultimately, its up to the student to decide how much they want to put into learning, and different students have different levels of difficulty and motivation for learning.

I was beginning to agree with you, and I think this may be true for most INTJs/NTs because they have greater tendencies towards autodidactism. But, a student is not going to learn calculus sitting by themselves. If you consider reading a book learning independently, remember that the author himself is a teacher. If he was a shitty textbook writer who didn't have a great grasp on what you're learning, you're going to struggle.


So, I would agree with the aphorism.

[Othesemo]

I'm better than some of my teachers. So no.

[Booko]

	Originally Posted by Shadizar To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	One teacher can't sufficiently teach 30 kids.

Funny, my teachers didn't have a problem doing that.

Teachers can be somewhat irrelevant to autodidacts.

---------- Post added 05-23-2012 at 01:24 AM ----------

	Originally Posted by joliet To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	If he was a shitty textbook writer who didn't have a great grasp on what you're learning, you're going to struggle.

An excellent point, joliet. I've seen some very bad textbooks in the past few years. I suppose they were "prettier" though.

My daughter was having difficulty with chemistry so I handed her my old college general chem text and she did much better even though the information density was greater.

The chem text the HS uses is a piece of dung, and that's being quite nice about it. God help me if I had to teach from that text. It looks like it was created by a committee, and we all know how Lazarus Long defined the term committee.

---------- Post added 05-23-2012 at 01:27 AM ----------

	Originally Posted by Othesemo To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I'm better than some of my teachers. So no.

Any particular subjects?

I had a tougher time with literature absent a decent teacher.

However, there was this physics teacher who insisted that evolutionary theory violated the laws of thermodynamics. Um yeah, because obviously the earth is a closed system. That probably ranks up there as my most interesting day in high school.

[Subgenius]

I don't think it's a yes/no/or both type question. I think teachers and students are parts of the question, but there are ton of different variables such as:
Continent
Country
Urban/rural
motivation of teacher/student
knowledge of teacher/student
Educational philosophy of school and teachers
relation or lack of relation of socioeconomic status of the shchool, students, teachers
grade/level
Child/Adult education
Funding/no funding
numerous demographic concerns
Gender ratio of staff
Public/private/boarding/voucher
Bad days/good days
Medications
Public transportation
Inter and intra cultural communication
Curriculum
Shitty standardized testing
shitty in-house assessment
The weather
For language, age, esl vs efl

You could literally literally go on all day and night listing things that can make or break a classroom. It's not always the student's or teacher's fault. They are just the ones that are easiest to lay the responsibility on. Unless you get lucky and a tornado rips through your classroom.

[Othesemo]

	Originally Posted by Booko To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Any particular subjects? I had a tougher time with literature absent a decent teacher. However, there was this physics teacher who insisted that evolutionary theory violated the laws of thermodynamics. Um yeah, because obviously the earth is a closed system. That probably ranks up there as my most interesting day in high school.

Mostly humanities. I think that most of my English teachers were just there because the school didn't want to hire an actual professor. I've also had a few private piano teachers whose musical accomplishments more or less amounted to playing a very pretty C Major scale.