Education Official Says Bad Teachers Can Be Good For Students

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.'"

Comments

I take it

[nimbius]

we havent given close scrutiny to things like creation science lately. Im fairly certain one shit teacher can do more to screw up a generation than an entire school of laureate PHDs.

Re:I take it

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you missed the slashdot story where about a third of scientists were deists and another third agnostic, huh?

Re:I take it

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read "through" the UK papers she did not get her job on ability. Nudge nudge wink wink say no more.

Re:I take it

[smaddox]

Most scientist don't deal with fundamental questions about the universe and existence. I hypothesize that the numbers would be very different if the poll were limited to particle physicists, string theorists, and astronomers. Unless forced to confront the issue head on, humans are perfectly capable of holding two diametrically opposed beliefs simultaneously.

Re:I take it

[kidcharles]

Wow, second post in a story about education and the union bashing has already started. That might be a Slashdot record (or maybe not).

Re:I take it

[mea37]

String theory? Are you just troling, or hoping nobody notices that the same criteria we use to distinguish ID from science (lack of testable predictions) thus far applies to string theory as well?

Anyway, I wouldn't be too sure that the numbers would differ so much when you talk only about cosmologists. The only way to hold science and religion as diametrically opposed views is if you take mindlessly literal interpretations of both.

Re:I take it

[rickb928]

If one teacher can screw up an entire generation, that's one heck of a teacher!

Re:I take it

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Arguably, one of the strengths of the scientific endeavor is that it does not, in theory, actually demand any particular belief state at all(In practice, of course, human psychology being what it is, is probably does exert a bit of a push).

In principle, somebody who believes that he is a brain in a jar being lied to by a Cartesian evil Genius could do science exactly as well as your stock empiricist, so long as they were both equally willing to use experimental methods, deductive logic, statistics, and so forth.

Re:I take it

[badboy_tw2002]

Uh, aren't scientific findings generally supposed to be taken literally? i.e. X causes Y, A is true because of B, E is a subclass of F, etc etc etc You can preface with "evidence shows" and whatnot, but when stating something as a scientific truth you generally aren't meant to be taken figuratively. And from the religious standpoint, which parts are to be taken literally vs. figuratively? How is one to tell the difference?

Re:I take it

[badboy_tw2002]

Could it possibly be because unions are part of the problem where bad teachers are concerned? Its almost impossible to fire an incompetent tenured teacher because of the unions. There's an entire room of teachers in NYC that sit there all day because the union rules won't allow them to be fired.

Re:I take it

[Mikkeles]

I guess he works 6 1/2 days a week for minimum wage, gets 2 weeks unpaid vacation a year and either likes it or thinks it unfair that some have it better.

Re:I take it

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I take it

[xaxa]

According to Panorama on BBC 1 a week or so ago, the incompetent teachers in the UK are still in classrooms teaching children. They move between schools a lot, but the process to remove their certificate to teach is really long so the headteachers don't bother. The (one of the?) government body that oversees teaching standards was abolished by the new government; hopefully whatever replaces it will be more effective.

I don't disagree that an incompetent teacher is a useful experience -- but the damage caused far outweighs this.

Re:I take it

[couchslug]

"Im fairly certain one shit teacher can do more to screw up a generation than an entire school of laureate PHDs."

Bad teachers teach the useful lessons of contempt for the system, resentment of bad authority, and how to route around people who deserve to be deceived and manipulated.

Re:I take it

[jfengel]

Are you just troling, or hoping nobody notices that the same criteria we use to distinguish ID from science (lack of testable predictions) thus far applies to string theory as well?

That's not really true. String theory makes a great many testable predictions, in that it devolves down to quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. Every test of quantum mechanics tests part of string theory, and those tests pass with flying colors.

People speak of string theory as if it were some sort of wild guess, but that's simply untrue. It's an extension of existing, well-founded work in quantum field theory. It is very much unlike intelligent design, which fails what few tests it does have, and is not built on top of any other cogent theory.

What string theory lacks is a set of tests for distinguishing it from other solutions to the problems of quantum mechanics. That is indeed a serious fault with it, and it means it may be premature to be putting much effort into string theory, especially at the cost of other theories. All of them, however, have only guesses as to their practical value, since the other theories also lack testable predictions. We pursue any of them only in the pure-science sense that good things sometimes come in unexpected places.

Nobody would give two hoots about string theory if it weren't for the philosophical ramifications: they're working on origin-of-the-universe stuff, which is of tremendous interest but little value since it's a state of the world we can't actually reproduce. It may yet prove to have practical value in unexpected ways, as quantum mechanics did, but to the general public it's all (literally) Greek except for the "how did we get here" question. Which causes a lot of people to express strong opinions about a field in which, curiously, they have essentially zero experience.

Re:I take it

[severoon]

Often, I find that one can evaluate the sense of a statement by taking it to its natural limit. So, if the occasional bad teacher can be good for students, then the occasional worst possible teacher should be great for the students, like a pedophile.

Limit[thisStupidStatement[x], x -> Infinity] = CatholicSchool

Re:I take it

[TapeCutter]

"I don't disagree that an incompetent teacher is a useful experience -- but the damage caused far outweighs this."

I think it is valid point that has been worded badly. Kids will often simply not like a teacher and in their eyes that teacher will be useless. When my kids were at school (particularly HS) and came home complaining about some trivial "injustice" I used to tell them the world was full of dickhead bosses, teachers, etc and they will have to learn how to deal with them. This does not mean I didn't get involved if I thought the teacher really was incompetent.

Re:I take it

[aurispector]

I'd rather have my kids actually learning the subject matter the teacher is supposed to be teaching. One thing the world has no shortage of is incompetent assholes and the mark of a decent school is the lack thereof. The kids will get plenty of experience dealing with incompetence in the real world.

In short, the story is about another whitewash of things that make our society worse instead of better. Kids shouldn't have to deal with the spectacle of an incompetent teacher, rather with the spectacle of said incompetent being thrown out on his ass as is right and proper.

Re:I take it

[xaxa]

It is bad. She's the chair of OFSTED -- the government body that inspects schools in the UK -- and she's responding to the BBC programme (or the general stories in the media) with those remarks. She will be well aware of children simply not liking a teacher -- OFSTED inspect schools by sitting in on lessons and (I think) talking to children.

On the other hand, she's at least agreeing that there are bad teachers, so hopefully her replacement (she's leaving the job) will do something about it.

The article accompanying the programme says

Mr Woodhead [a former Chief Inspector of Schools] described an incompetent teacher as someone who could not keep control in the classroom, had a lack of understanding of their subjects or might not even like their pupils.

Some believe part of the problem lies with head teachers' unwillingness to subject those suspected of incompetence to proper competence tests, referring those found wanting to the GTC.

Panorama has uncovered evidence they are being given good references in exchange for agreeing to look for work in alternative schools.

Re:I take it

[couchslug]

"So, if the occasional bad teacher can be good for students, then the occasional worst possible teacher should be great for the students, like a pedophile."

Some sugary dessert can be pleasant and a harmless treat. :)

Re:I take it

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[FatdogHaiku]

It just seems like there should be a Comparative Religion vs Multiple Personality Disorder joke around here someplace...

Re:I take it

[couchslug]

"Bad teachers teach the useful lessons of contempt for the system, resentment of bad authority, and how to route around people who deserve to be deceived and manipulated."

Troll, eh? Does anyone NOT think these are useful lessons for the real world?

Contempt for the current educational system is WIDELY expressed on Slashdot, ditto resentment of bad authority, and who here thinks human obstacles don't deserve to be lied to and manipulated in order to secure just victory over them?

A good, healthy "In my way? Fuck you!" attitude is perfectly appropriate in many situations. Students are going into a bad corrupt world full of scumbags, and should learn to be comfortable dealing with scumbags in order to secure necessary advantage. The scumbags are a fact of life, and learning to treat deserving people with scorn and contempt is a damn good life lesson, especially as opposed to being taught blind UNEARNED respect for everyone no matter what a pile of shit they may be.

Students know who the bad teachers are. If any youth out there want some useful advice, learn how to humor, steer, and exploit such people before they screw you over. People who teach blind submission are your enemies. Learn to win by making bad people genuinely think you like and respect them, even if you hate their guts. Avoid being exploited, and learn to exploit those who try to exploit you because you owe them nothing. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Learn to enjoy this and other games. :)

Re:I take it

[Archades54]

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.

Re:I take it

[Anonymous Coward]

http://milesmathis.com/string.html

Re:I take it

[abhijeetmhatre2]

I had a teacher in high school who used to get confused when I asked complex questions in physics. I actually liked her and also learnt a lot from discussions with her. Others teachers used to think of me as a disturbance in the fluency of their lecturing and fabricate quick smart answers which were usually wrong.

Re:I take it

[CAIMLAS]

Forget your creationist strawman. That's hardly the big issue here.

The problem is that we've got such a "wealth" (glut is maybe a better word) of horrible teachers in America that the good ones are few and far between these days. The good teachers are being held down and pushed out by a bureaucratic system that is keen on top-down control. Top-down control mechanisms don't work so well; in fact, they scale very poorly, so they must exert what the controlling "educators" see as "best practices" upon the stupid, peon teachers.

Of course, these teachers are only stupid because of the system. While the pay for teachers is pretty poor these days (particularly compared to even 20 years ago) despite year after year of increased educational tax spending, this isn't the core issue. The core issue is that they have "set the standard so high" - ie, shoveled piles of bureaucratic shit on top of anyone wanting to become a teacher - that only the most insipid, functionally useless people actually make it through. You know the type: the dumb-as-rocks B-average student who spends their every night doing homework.

Aside from these toilet bowl gems, there are a scant few, noble souls who push through the mire to actually teach, whether for belief in the mission or the system itself. There aren't many of them, and they do their best, but their far in the minority. All the while, many who would teach are dissuaded from even attempting it by the reams of stupidity-masquerading-as-officialdom. The low pay is only icing on the cake (and a convenient, frequent excuse to ask for more funding to further bloat their bureaucracy without any accountability or results).

After we fix these existential issues, then you (and I) can start bitching about these smokescreen problems. Seriously: if children are educated well, they will be able to see the poorly clad arguments, misdirection, and outright avoidance of poorly conceived dogma. Basic logic (both linguistic and mathematic), critical thinking, and introspection should be the main things taught in early schooling - but they're not. If they were, this wouldn't be such a problem.

Note: I once thought, briefly, about becoming a high school teacher. I'm very good at it, and am able to make it entertaining in the process (yes, for all ages - I still have people comment on technical presentations I did 5 years ago). I didn't do it once I read about all the "soft words" (ie verging on doublespeak) teachers were required to learn and understand, and how foolish the training for teachers is. Do you realize how quickly I (or, probably, your average adult-and-fit-for-public slashdotter) would be kicked from a school due to internal "politics" alone? Thinking outside the box is a felony in today's schools.

Re:I take it

[X0563511]

I guess you missed the part where you understand what deism or agnosticism are...

Re:I take it

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's your non-literal interpretation of science?

Re:I take it

[gandhi_2]

Sounds like a good policy.

Re:I take it

[mwvdlee]

Name one testable prediction that String theory provides.
The best predictions still require a scale of observation that quantum physics does not allow.
String theory right now only has internal coherence, making it better than competing theories but still completely unproven.

Re:I take it

[k.a.f.]

That's not really true. String theory makes a great many testable predictions, in that it devolves down to quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. Every test of quantum mechanics tests part of string theory, and those tests pass with flying colors.

That's a really disingenious line of reasoning. If ST is an extension of QM, but the only testable parts are those that were already in QM, then it is effectively completely untestable. You are arguing as if the flying spaghetti monster were somehow more plausible because of the well-tested predictions of standard biology about cats and microbes.

Re:I take it

[Anonymous Coward]

-You know the type: the dumb-as-rocks B-average student who spends their every night doing homework.

Must never have had the (mis)fortune of being an engineering student. Looking back at my years as an undergrad, I don't recall much beyond the countless nights slaving away at those accursed assignments. Of course I could have just used the illicitly obtained solutions manuals, but what fun would that have been?

Good times...

Re:I take it

[Anonymous Coward]

While I realize that it's rather more elegant and beautiful to a scientist to have a theory that mathematically reduces to QFT, what you just said largely applies to ID. You more or less state that string theory is additional complexity, with no new testable predictions. That is sort of true of ID as well, it simply states, everything was created cuz of , and all observations are due to this.

Nobody would give two hoots about string theory if it weren't for the philosophical ramifications: they're working on origin-of-the-universe stuff, which is of tremendous interest

That statement is easily interpreted as "string theory is a religious pursuit". I'm not saying it is, but IMHO there is a long long way to go before string theory or M-theory can be taken seriously like QFT. Notably, one testable prediction that can't be modeled by current theories, alternatively, demonstration of a usable unified field theory equally precise to current models in their applicable domains.

Re:I take it

[L4t3r4lu5]

A paedophile may be an excellent teacher. Not saying we should put child molesters in schools, just saying that those two statements aren't mutually exclusive.

Considering the last line of your comment, I'd have thought you'd pick up on that.

Re:I take it

[evilandi]

String theory? Are you just troling, or hoping nobody notices that the same criteria we use to distinguish ID from science (lack of testable predictions) thus far applies to string theory as well?

The method used to distinguish these things is the word "theory". That is a special word used by scientists to denote ideas which they acknowledge are either yet to be tested, or are untestable in whole or part. Subsections of ideas covered by this word - such as causes or effects - can be, and are, submitted for testing.

As opposed to creationists who insist that particular texts are not merely entirely true, but the word of a supreme being, and use "faith" as an excuse to refuse to submit to testing, even for those parts of their belief which can be tested.

I had a theory that Holland would win the World Cup. However, I wasn't daft enough to have faith and I certainly didn't believe that their victory was assured by a supreme being. And even if I did have faith in a supreme being, I would never have guessed that it would be a German octopus.

Re:I take it

[ryanov]

This is the crappy NY Post version of what's happening. The truth is much farther from that end. If you read about what those rooms are for, in many cases there are teachers there who are not teaching because they're brought up on charges but will ultimately be cleared, and if the system moved more quickly, they'd be back in the classroom faster. Unions are occasionally part of the problem... but how about administrators that give tenure to bad teachers?

Re:I take it

[mdwh2]

Yes, I did miss it - link?

Agnostics are still people who don't believe in God (and the distinction between "atheism" and "agnostic" is a matter of definitions that tells us little about a person's actual stance).

Deists don't believe in an interventionist god, and so would hardly be Creationists in the context being discussed here.

Re:I take it

[Golddess]

Idle sucks with trying to navigate threads, so maybe someone already said this, but I guess you must be one of those people that think Intelligent Design is real science.

Re:I take it

[LihTox]

I haven't talked to any string theorists in a long time, so maybe I'm underestimating their dogmatism, but I haven't heard of any string theorists trying to get high schools to teach string theory, and I doubt string theorists spend all their time trying to disprove quantum mechanics and general relativity under the assumption that proving current theories wrong will show that they are right.

String theory might not be science yet, but equating it with Intelligent Design is disingenuous, given that ID's explanation of the origin of species is "and then a miracle happened!"

Re:I take it

[mariox19]

I take issue with nothing you've said, but for the characterization that this is the "NY Post" version. I've read about the so-called rubber rooms in the NY Times, and it is just as bad as the Post.

Re:I take it

[CAIMLAS]

I was talking about high school students as described above, on account of that being the topic of the thread.

Re:I take it

[Anonymous Coward]

I once thought, briefly, about becoming a high school teacher

I hope you were not considering high school english. You have incorrect usage of "their" in paragraph 4 (it should be "they're".) You have incorrect use of a colon in paragraph 5. Finally, "existential" is a nice word but it is not relevant in the context of your rant.

Re:I take it

[severoon]

Well, x doesn't stand for "pedophilia," it stands for "badness of teacher." Pedophilia is just one possibility for making the teacher worse...but you gotta start with bad and go worse from there, not a good teacher and add a dash of pedobear.

Re:I take it

[colinrichardday]

His criticism of string theory would be more credible if his math was better. What does he mean by Delta t^2? If he means (Delta t)^2, then he's wrong, as Delta x/(Delta t)^2 would be nonzero even if the motion is linear. If he means Delta(t^2), he's also wrong, as it would not be time-translation invariant.

Re:I take it

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like a fellow victim of the California education system.

Re:I take it

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this is a totally wrong analogy.

Before any experiments confirmed Einstein's special relativity, it was clear that Lorentz transformations were the same as the typical Galilean transformations in the low speed regime.

Similarly, string theory agrees with quantum mechanics.

Re:I take it

[mea37]

"The method used to distinguish these things is the word "theory". That is a special word used by scientists to denote ideas which they acknowledge are either yet to be tested, or are untestable in whole or part. "

Wow. You better look up the word "theory".

A scientific assertion that is yet to be tested is a hypothesis. An assertion that cannot be tested is not a scientific assertion at all.

I'm wondering what you think something is called once it's been tested.

Re:I take it

[mea37]

"String theory might not be science yet"

Which is the entirety of what I said about it, your thin-skinned whining notwithstanding.

"but equating it with Intelligent Design is disingenuous"

In terms of their standing as science - the only thing I commented on or had reason to comment on - it is not.

Re:I take it

[mea37]

Study philosophy of science a bit and see how fond you remain of the phrase "scientific truth".

Science produces useful models that describe our experiences; nothing more, and nothing less. "Force is equal to mass times acceleration" is not a true statement about the universe; but it is a very useful model.

Re:I take it

[Anonymous Coward]

"Theory" fits the definition of "either yet to be tested, or are untestable in whole or part."

"Hypothesis" only fits "yet to be tested".

"Hypothesis" is thus a subset of "Theory".

Theories which are "untestable in whole or part" cannot be hypotheses.

Re:I take it

[conureman]

I always thought Agnostics didn't know whether or not there was any "God" that physically exist. I am not a Scientist, but several of the "Gods" have thugs who will physically beat you down, so if I'm cornered, I profess Deism, or "Christianity" if it looks particularly dangerous.

Re:I take it

[conureman]

I don't want to start a Four Yorkshiremen thread, ...or do I? But when my neighbor's little brother beat up our old Gym Teacher, all we could say was "why didn't WE think of that?"

Re:I take it

[Maarx]

Most scientist don't deal with fundamental questions about the universe and existence. I hypothesize that the numbers would be very different if the poll were limited to particle physicists, string theorists, and astronomers. Unless forced to confront the issue head on, humans are perfectly capable of holding two diametrically opposed beliefs simultaneously.

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Re:I take it

[b4upoo]

I am certain that a few teachers seek to actually destroy students and get them out of the educational system. And that bitter, acid type of teacher may be a bit more common than people suspect.

Re:I take it

[Anonymous Coward]

That would support the two-thirds of all people are morons theory.

This reminds me

[Anonymous Coward]

of my old boss at work

Re:This reminds me

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, does your old boss argue with himself about bad teachers?

Summary is misleading.

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFA: Zenna Atkins, stressing these were her personal views, earlier told the Sunday Times...

Re:Summary is misleading.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is the Sunday Times running articles about the personal views of this woman in the first place, then?

Either they're going for the sensationalist angle (Which is likely), or she's playing a dangerous game by allowing her personal version of idiocy to be aired all over the english-speaking world. I don't disagree that there are life lessons to be learned from just about every situation, but in some cases a poor teacher can be as harmful to a student's growth and development as an abusive parent, and I think it speaks volumes that she says "actually surviving" a poor teacher can be an advantage. What of the kids who don't "survive"? And what does it tell students about the world if the school isn't taking measures to eliminate poor teaching?

I don't want any more generations growing up with the idea that "it's ok to be incompetent as long as you have connections" (in this case, the union). Schools should not be creating sheeple! If I had the means I'd tear the system apart, starting with idiots like this woman.

Re:Summary is misleading.

[iamhassi]

If her personal views were racists, would that be ok then? People's "personal views" filter into their work, you can't 100% separate the two anymore than a pothead can fly commercial airplanes.

"'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.'""

The problem I have with this statement is that as children they might not be able to cope with an incompetent teacher. No only that but these teachers have a large impact on how far you go in life, if a teacher is incompetent and teaches kids incorrectly or causes children to fail that could seriously hurt their chances of succeeding in life.

Her statement is akin to "Every child should have an abusive parent, because when you get in the real world people might hit you and you need to defend yourself." HUH? Every teacher should be as close to perfect as possible, the only thing a incompetent teacher can teach is how to be incompetent and we have too many incompetent people in the world already.

Re:Summary is misleading.

[johndoejersey]

GG Allin would agree with you. That says a lot.

You can't compare an abusive parent to an incompetant teacher.

OJT

[Anne_Nonymous]

I think that's a lesson better reserved for on the job training. Any kid who has a crappy minimum wage job during school, or shortly thereafter, will learn it quickly enough.

Re:OJT

[dkleinsc]

I will say I did learn something reasonably valuable from bad teachers, which was don't trust authority to do the right thing or tell the truth, especially when questioned. By high school, I knew how to ignore, work around, go above, and end the career of bad teachers, which has served me well in my professional life.

Re:OJT

[Anonymous Coward]

More OJ Training will only lead to gloves that don't fit, and acquitted criminals.

I'd reply...

[Anonymous Coward]

but my public school education prevents me from being coherent on any given topic.

Re:I'd reply...

[Flea of Pain]

I have to say, I see all these comments ragging on the public school system and I just have to ask...is this an America only thing? I am from Canada, and while I have my fair share of beefs with the education system (currently in University to be a teacher myself), I have seen (through practicums within high-schools) that if you live in a city you can enter into enriched programs. I myself was extremely bored throughout high-school since I grew up in the country and attended a school with no enrichment.
The enrichment programs offered were all very good, ranging from I.B. programs to simply taking advanced placement. In the school I was in last semester, if you took A.P. throughout school, you would have finished first year university level subject matter upon graduation, and this was recognized and these students allowed in many cases to skip the first year university course in that subject.

Re:I'd reply...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that you Boris?

Re:I'd reply...

[Sigma 7]

I am from Canada, and while I have my fair share of beefs with the education system (currently in University to be a teacher myself), I have seen (through practicums within high-schools) that if you live in a city you can enter into enriched programs. I myself was extremely bored throughout high-school since I grew up in the country and attended a school with no enrichment.

You didn't miss much. Enrichment programs were usually taking out 40 minutes every week and while nice in showing possibilities on what to study... it still didn't give any direction. Even regular courses were like that - while the art course did try showing students many ways they can be artistic, they never taught basics (e.g. what amounts to perfecting drawing ability.)

The regular courses were either tried to teach respiration to those that already mastered it, or skipped past essential basics. In addition, there wasn't enough material to fill the necessary 110 hours of instruction, so they assigned homework instead and used class time to play games such as "7-up".

In hindsight, I'd have preferred a correspondence course. No enrichment there, but at least progress within said course isn't blocked by unnecessary delays, and there isn't any need to participate in distracting items that provide no direct benefit to education.

Re:I'd reply...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, there is a lot of dissatisfaction with the American school system. I should know; I'm a product thereof. I don't think it's entirely America, but there are a lot of people here so the sheer number of people who had a poor education is likely higher even if percentages are similar between the US and Canada.

We lived in an area where we couldn't get access to AP or IB programs as kids, and we weren't allowed to skip grades. Ever. My sister tried and was told that they simply would not put her in a class ahead of her peers even though she gave them no reason to refuse. They came up with some BS about social development. Most of my AP classes didn't give me any transferable college credit, so I ended up having to take all of the usual first-year college courses anyway, and while slightly more challenging the AP classes were also a nightmare to schedule because most of them were run through distance learning with a half dozen schools attached to a broadcast out of the local community college, and the class times didn't match our high school class periods. My AP history class got 10 minutes for lunch senior year, and was late to the class after! Then there's the fact that America is effin' huge, and while most schools make some half-arsed attempt to look good by "offering" AP or IB classes, there are a lot of places where the teachers can't tell you the difference between your and you're, let alone teach a proper AP class, and administrators are too overpaid to care, as long as the school board isn't breathing down their necks.

I saw the kinds of people American universities are putting into elementary schools. My classmates were drunkards and idiots, and they passed all their classes because they were good at making cutesie bulletin boards.

And of course there were the football teams in our region getting new uniforms every year or two and the parents voting yes on a budget that included a $3mil football field, while the science teachers couldn't get new books for the last 15 and the school Shakespeare club was canceled due to lack of funding/willing teachers to supervise it. Yeah, really a great, stimulating, intellectual place, those high schools. Excuse the bitterness... I just didn't appreciate the waste of 12 years of my life in a place where I wasn't allowed to read a chapter ahead of the damn class because the incompetent teachers couldn't handle planning a lesson that included something more challenging than "answer the questions on the worksheet".

Re:I'd reply...

[cbhacking]

It's not always that bad, but... yeah, the US public school system is generally poor quality. I had a better vocabulary than my third-grade teacher, who could not understand why I wanted normal lined paper (rather than the typical 8" by 5" sheets with a 4" box for a picture at the top, and 5 lines filling the bottom 4 inches) for writing assignments. I'm not sure if she was opposed to the practice of writing itself (and therefore would never write a thousand words when a hundred or so would fill the required number of her preferred "pages"), or just couldn't imagine a third-grader with better than what the US laughably considers a third-grade writing level. Hell, we were tested on whether we could count to 100 without skipping or repeating anything or going out of order, as if this were a major accomplishment.

It's not always the teachers, though. In fact, sometimes the teachers are great, but the administrators suck. I started taking tenth grade math while in eighth grade, and the math teacher suggested that I was good enough at the material that I could probably pass the class in just one semester (rather than the typical full year). I did so, then made it two-thirds of the way through 11th grade math the second semester before the head of math at that high school discovered what I was doing and put an end to it (apparently two grade levels above was acceptable, but three above was not, for reasons completely alien to me). I spent the last six weeks or so of fifth period (math) doing nothing (reading for pleasure, until I got bored, bypassed the school's Internet filters, and spent the rest of the time online), and had to re-take the entire eleventh-grade math class (at normal speed) the next year.

Of course, the school administration is responsible for ensuring the quality of their employees (the teachers), so in the end, this "education official" is no better suited to her job than the incompetent teachers she is protecting. The students get screwed either way though, and it's a lot harder to avoid an incompetent official with control over your local school or school district than it is to avoid one particular teacher.

Re:I'd reply...

[Anonymous Coward]

...third-grade...we were tested on whether we could count to 100 without skipping or repeating anything or going out of order, as if this were a major accomplishment.

Holy crap, dude, where did you go to elementary school? We were taught long division around mid-year and expected to have it down before year end (whether all of us did was a different matter). That was RI public schools, about a quarter century ago.

- T

Not real life

[SuperKendall]

In real life, if things are bad enough in a job you can leave.

A kid can't leave a classroom no matter how much the teacher sucks, unless the parents are really well off. But even then the parents have to decide to take the kid out, and the parents may have no idea how bad things really are.

Re:Not real life

[Kjella]

Also, at least in certain grades kids are not that interested. In the early classes we would likely have slacked, in the latter classes we'd be pissed that we weren't getting the help we needed to get into good schools or good jobs. There's plenty injustice to go around so you don't need to ignore it, excuse it or accept it.

Re:Not real life

[Monkeedude1212]

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.

Re:Not real life

[Anonymous Coward]

Still an important life lesson: rich people don't have to put up with incompetence - that is why we have to teach all those little future middle managers to do it.

Re:Not real life

[Garridan]

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

[Halborr]

On the other hand, pumping out mindless drones lets the ones who actually care stand out.

The world needs lackeys.

Re:Not real life

[socz]

Ahh see, you are wrong after all...


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:Not real life

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes, in "Real Life", the boss also needs people to do work without having to argue and explain from first principles why he wants task X done.

Re:Not real life

[socz]

Oh and one more thing... I got kicked out of "Foreign Language Class" because, according to the teacher: "I was intimidating the other students." What that really means is that I apparently was 'more fluent' than the teacher and was intimidating her, so it was easier for her to give me the boot than have the rest of the kids be like this teacher sucks.

As you can imagine, I had GREAT!!!!!!!! experiences in school!

Re:Not real life

[munky99999]

That and in addition we have a situation where we protect bad teachers. Billy has poor marks? He must not try very hard, he's a good kid with lots of potential, but he doesnt apply himself. *wait no couldnt possibly be the teacher is shit* Personal story: I'm terrible with english, my english teacher was a bad teacher, I was a 90s student otherwise. He never taught worth shit. He would be 15mins later everyday for the 1hr class. Half the time he wouldnt actually teach. He would simply talk about last night's basketball game or some movie or whatever. On top of that... as an anti-cheating measure we had to write our essays, on a topic he gave during the class, in class. So we were given 30-45mins to write 3-5 page essay. Everyone would fail unless they cheated. If he didnt like you. You would get caught cheating. While if you were his friend... you could cheat at will as he never said crap against you. Infact he would talk to these friends out of class and tell them ahead of time the topic of the essay, they'd write the essay and bring it to class on the day. So I complain and complain and everyone says it's my fault for not trying hard enough. I go up the chain. Which then gets back. They basically blind the teacher. He has to start giving the tests the other english teacher gives. The same ones. Since he never taught worth a shit. Everyone basically starts getting about 20% on the tests. Which proved how shit a teacher he was. Except he got to imput the marks and decided to give all his friends 90s then basically input everyone else on a curve. Despite that curve i was basically at the top of the curve. I still end up with a terrible mark and no knowledge. tldr; bad teachers are protected and hurt students.

Re:Not real life

[Courageous]

Years back I hired a day laborer to help me with a concrete pad I was having him pour. He knew some broken English. I knew little about pouring concrete.

When I asked him to do the job he said in broken English "Senior, I think..... no. I know, yes I know, I must have a long... how do you say?... woods for these job". He was trying to tell me he needed a long 2x4 or some such to flat-scrape the small pad. Which was of course correct, but I really hadn't thought about it.

Good employee. I hired him again and again over the years. Speaks fluent English, now.

Bad management can be decent management insofar as they have some inkling the people they are working for may be a bit more acquainted with the work they are doing than management is. I have been lucky enough to work in settings where almost all managers are like me. Count my blessings, eh?

Joe.

Re:Not real life

[Antisyzygy]

Honestly, I think people should not be able to earn an A+ unless they do extra credit. Too many universities and colleges have professors that give too lenient of grades and it makes people begin to expect it. In the case of your Girlfriend, I guess the point is she had other people edit it and didn't actually do it all herself. I suppose an English major would be more likely to know how they need to edit it to make it "perfect". That being said, her professors logic is off. Just because someone is not an English major does not mean they cannot produce "perfect" work. Assuming the professor did not know that your girlfriend had others edit it, it does not mean she could not have produced it herself.

Re:Not real life

[mosb1000]

That reminds me of my 8th grade algebra teacher, Ms. Thomas. She established the class based on memorization and required her students to complete hundreds of nearly identical problems on a daily basis. It was horrible, I couldn't learn anything. So I asked my mom to request a different class for me.

Before I could leave I had to sit down with the Assistant Principal and the teacher to explain why I wanted to transfer. Ultimately they told me that I was hurting her feelings for wanting to leave and that I would be better off sticking through it because I would learn more. I was just an eight grader, what was I supposed to say to them? I gave up on leaving. Then I failed the class. Schools are run by a bunch of idiots who don't know what they're doing, and don't (as far as I can tell) care about their students. Fuck'em.

Re:Not real life

[misexistentialist]

Although I'll believe you when you say that the French teacher was bad, teaching students to speak like Parisians would hardly have been useful to them. And your girlfriend didn't seem to understand humanities where 100% can indeed be impossible (if you were that good you wouldn't be in college, you would be writing books), and while hard work can get you a B, usually you need to display some sort of creativity and/or virtuosity to get an A. Having 7 people edit her paper was also cheating unless she disclosed it, in which case I wouldn't blame the professor for not taking her too seriously. Speaking like your parents or getting on the Dean's List is just another kind of conformity.

Re:Not real life

[Monkeedude1212]

I was in the room when she wrote it out by hand with over a dozen textbooks circled around her, only to have her hand it to me to type it up (simply because my words per minute are far higher than hers) - and she had all those people edit it BECAUSE she got a paper back before with a C grade - no feedback, and she didn't know what was wrong and the prof wouldn't tell her when she asked.

When it comes to university, there is no "extra credit". You can't hand it more work or any kind of bonus material to boost your mark, most profs consider that completely unfair to the students. Profs give them a set of guidelines and say "Impress me".

If a student basically writes a good paper based on what they learned, they should be capable of an A. Basically the profs ideology was that unless you offered something completely groundbreaking that shattered the foundations of something they are teaching with some bold new insight, you couldn't get an A+.

And how can you expect an Undergraduate to offer new evidence on something that they are Learning? How can you expect someone who doesn't have a PHD to offer up some new idea they haven't thought of yet?

It's absolutely ludicrous and is not how the education system should be based. This is about educating, and nothing more.

Re:Not real life

[Monkeedude1212]

Teaching students to speak like Parisians would hardly have been useful to them.

Yes, but it's not that she was didn't want to teach us parisian, it's that she singled out a student who KNEW perfect fluent parisian french, when the rest of us are barely capable of pronouncing the words. The student wasn't event correcting the teacher, because they knew there was a difference, but because the student was already so fluent in parisian french, it just didn't come natural to speak it the other way. And anytime the student slipped up, the teacher made an extra effort to point it out.

Having 7 people edit her paper was also cheating unless she disclosed it, in which case I wouldn't blame the professor for not taking her too seriously

No, editting might mean something different to you, but to us it means reading it over and pointing out anything that seems flawed of unclear, then my girlfriend would reword or explain more, and then ask them to review it again.

It was not "Here's my paper, make it better". That is not editting.

Re:Not real life

[Fallingcow]

And your girlfriend didn't seem to understand humanities where 100% can indeed be impossible

I've never understood the point of a grading scale with one end so high that it is considered to be unattainable. Every time I encounter the concept it reminds me of the "this amp goes to 11" scene, but in reverse--and every bit as absurd.

Re:Not real life

[bzipitidoo]

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:Not real life

[misexistentialist]

Grade inflation makes lower grades basically unattainable too. Grading never works very well.

Re:Not real life

[Handover Phist]

Well, if a kid has really crappy parents, at least dealing with a really crappy boss will be easy.... Hey, waidaminnit!

Re:Not real life

[Antisyzygy]

It depends. If every professor gave C's to truly average people, then the scale would be different. Nowadays if you do not have above a 3.0 you may as well not have an education as far as your employment prospects are concerned. I would consider most people who apply themselves scholastically whole-hearted and have average intelligence an B+ or A- student. Unfortunately these days people give out grades differently then they did in the past. Your girlfriends professor sounds like a throwback to another era. I agreed with you in part in my last message. Basically I highlighted where I thought your girlfriends professor was at fault.

Re:Not real life

[couchslug]

"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."

Make sure PARENTS know the teacher sucks, in term of "the school isn't getting a return on its investment". An excellent way to attack someone is to express that their presence is costly, and their unfair grades are an economic penalty to students. Such a teacher discourages paying customers from attending their classes. This is WONDERFUL ammo with community colleges, by the way. They are driven by a few profitable programs which often carry the rest. Coordinated, plausible critiques over time can be a career ender. Better still if students casually express dissatisfaction to any staff they meet while asking them for advice. That undermines the target.

Re:Not real life

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

When I was in 7th Grade French Class (being Canadian, learning french is often encouraged),

Sadly, learning English was not encouraged nearly as much...

(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Re:Not real life

[CAIMLAS]

A kid can't leave a classroom no matter how much the teacher sucks, unless the parents are really well off.

So it's like prison, then, is it?

The whole idea of a uniform institutional system for the purposes of education should make anyone who's ever looked at a flower and admired its beauty, enjoyed drawing a picture, or enjoyed solving a difficult problem for the sake of solving a problem should abhor. There are no alternatives for people who, by their very nature, do not fit in that (very small) box. People learn in dozens, if not hundreds, of different ways - it's the result of us all being unique, thinking creatures (until such traits are robbed from us). It's only natural that there should be, at the bare minimum, a legal means of alternative without the (often, quite literally spoken) threat of having your children taken away.

Of course, once the state starts givign money to alternative education venues, the government will want control of those venues. And everyone knows that bureaucrats not only always know best but almost always get their way.

Re:Not real life

[Anonymous Coward]

It was also editted by 5 English Majors and 2 other friends of hers

That's would be considered cheating at every school I've ever attended.

Re:Not real life

[TheLink]

They could always tell students that school is like prison, only you're less likely to be let out earlier for good behaviour.

Re:Not real life

[a whoabot]

100% means you cannot improve the work at all. For closing trees or providing counter interpretations in a symbolic logic course, that is indeed possible. But for a course where you write essays in a short slot of time (sometimes as short as two weeks), I think it is highly unlikely that you could not find some improvement that could be made to the work. Even the smallest clarification would be an improvement.

Re:Not real life

[sulfur]

Honestly, I think people should not be able to earn an A+ unless they do extra credit. Too many universities and colleges have professors that give too lenient of grades and it makes people begin to expect it.

Very true. I happened to study in a country where you could earn the highest grade (10) only if you did some significant extra credit, or if you showed that you knew more than the class required in some other way. It highly motivated students to go "above and beyond", and gave a student something to be really proud about when they earned a 10. I also studied in the US, and it's too easy here to get an A - simply do everything that is required with no "thinking outside the box" involved.

Re:Not real life

[Jedi Alec]

They tend to have this world view that people are by nature lazy fucks who must be motivated by threats and fear.

Ever notice how many people view the world largely based on how they view themselves? ;-)

Re:Not real life

[ZmeiGorynych]

You think you might lose your _marriage_ because you're fired and broke? I woudn't think that kind of marriage is worth keeping (and before you ask, yes I'm married, for over 13 years).

And of course you only walk away from a paycheck once you got another one lined up - if your boss is a moron, they won't notice you're looking around. I'm speaking from happy experience there - after a pretty good boss walked out, his replacement was an asshole - and after 3 months of intense interviewing (while still being employed of course), I went on to a much, much better job.

Seriously, if you let your boss terrorize you, you only got yourself to blame.

Re:Not real life

[Machtyn]

Not necessarily true. But the parent has to be strong and forceful and it can be accomplished. However, generally you are correct. Even Mitt Romney had to move his kids to a private school to avoid having their son berated by a man-hater teacher. (Principal could do nothing, teacher was seniority, sadly, not everyone can easily move a child to private school or home school.)

Re:Not real life

[hal2814]

Parents? PARENTS? Let your parents land the helicopter and start taking care of your own problems. There are grievance channels at just about any institution. Use them. You'll often find some pretty reasonable people running them. Besides, with student loans being as cheap and plentiful as they are, you should be your own "paying customer." It's your life. Take the wheel.

Re:Not real life

[Anonymous Coward]

Programming 101, a classmate does this:

int biggestnumber (int a, int b, int c) {
        if (b>a) a=b;
        if (c>a) a=c;
        return a;
}

Our teacher insisted (a lot) that it couldn't work and that a fourth auxiliary variable was necessary to store the biggest number. He even tried to prove it. That's when realised that our teacher was an absolute incompetent.

Weeks later I went into detention because I wasn't paying attention to his explanations, I wasn't, I was reading the KR. That was the first time of five. The school director refused to believe that I was actually studying in class and much less that a first year student knew more C that the new teacher, so I was threatened with the expulsion if my discipline problems didn't end. I stopped attending the programming classes, and was about to quit my studies overall, but my friends pushed me and I went directly to the final exam, and got an A.

Lesson learnt? The schools are full of bad teachers that can completely ruin your motivation and should be fired, but they are not because the bureaucrats above them are even more incompetent and all protect each other.

Re:Not real life

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you're such a liar.

Everyone knows /. readers don't have girlfriends.

Re:Not real life

[supermariosd]

I've had a lot of problems with language teachers as well. It seems like it's easier to get around bad teachers in math and the sciences because of the lack of wiggle room for grading. My Spanish teacher senior year of high school would literally assign grades at the end of the semester based on how hard she "felt" you had worked. Luckily, I'd had teachers like that in the past, so I knew how to BS my way into higher grades. She was also a bit crazy; once she lectured us on how Muslims must like the number 11 because of the Moorish invasion of Spain in 711 and the attacks on 9/11/2001.

A lot of the fault in my school district didn't lie with the teachers themselves, though. The more advanced Spanish literature classes had a lot of native speakers who were put into the classes prematurely just because they could speak Spanish. Counselors had incentives to put them in the advanced classes because it looks better for the school when we have more kids enrolled. They had no clue about orthography, grammar, polite speech, etc., which wasn't their fault, but nonetheless detrimental to the class. Teachers had to keep up with multiple levels of learning all in one class period, so it was hard for them to focus on any one group.

On the original topic, though: I obviously don't think that bad teachers help students. Self-motivated learners get dragged down by trying to please the teacher's whims, and those who aren't yet self-motivated see the teacher's actions as a disincentive to try to learn. Why the teachers are bad is a multifaceted problem that involves both the teachers and the bureaucratic environment the teachers work in.

Re:Not real life

[RadioElectric]

Grading is typically done to give a particular distribution of marks. For example: a normal distribution with the mean at 63 and a standard deviation of 8. This seems unfair, the whole class could "improve" by ten marks from one year to the next but they'd still all get the same marks. The alternative is worse though, as different criteria between markers would cause massive fluctuations between them (or between the same marker in different moods). Obviously there are usually "mark schemes", but I find these tell less than half of the story. Sometimes there are pieces of work that it is very difficult to find fault with and these might end up getting "outlier" marks, but it's very hard to get 100% when the marker's attitude has switched to "what can I find wrong with this so it doesn't fuck with the distribution?".

Re:Not real life

[Idiomatick]

Anyone aligned w/ socrates is bound to piss off the drone producing drones known as teachers. Least it likely won't get you killed :P (And I'm sure you wouldn't have done anything differently even if you'd known the teacher was going to kick you out, so fuck em)

Re:Not real life

[Anonymous Coward]

edit = read paper + add comments.

Re:Not real life

[SnEptUne]

Aren't you expecting everyone must share the same value as you, including the teacher/professor? Is it really the professor's fault that the world is so hung up on a grade of a paper, or should it not be the fault of a system where grade, which is relative, is viewed as the absolute standard? In some other country, if you get a 40/100, you are already doing very well, the passing grade being 30/100. Are we going to kill off diversity and create a monotonic entity in the name of standardization? There is of course a balance of what a teacher should be allowed to do, but people are not machine.

I have not come across any teacher that I would really called a bad teacher, but they do all have some quirk, be it a math teacher that is obsessed with punctuation and grammar, or an Art teacher that overestimates the difference in gender. But as long as they tried their best, and is genuine about the education of students, I consider them to be a good teacher.

Re:Not real life

[Monkeedude1212]

and is genuine about the education of students

See, okay, if every one of your teachers is genuine about the education of students, then you haven't had a bad teacher.

Where we are raised, there are more teachers who are NOT in it for the education of students.

WTH

[sabs]

Is this person just mentally retarded?

Re:WTH

[idries]

Nah... she just had a bad teacher.

Re:WTH

[vell0cet]

Nah... she's just THE bad teacher that she's talking about.

Re:WTH

[iamhassi]

so she was caught doing something, and now she's going to the press to explain why she shouldn't lose her job, but making it sound like a press release.

This is brilliant! "Don't fire me, use me as an example to show other people what not to do."

Re:WTH

[xaxa]

Seen on the noticeboard in the staff room at a school:
"Failed teachers become PE teachers.
Failed PE teachers become OFSTED inspectors."

I picture a Monty Python skit

[elrous0]

I just got the image of a skit in my head where a student keeps complaining to his principal (or headmaster, I suppose) about increasingly awful things, only to be told that this will build character since "you encounter it in real life." The last visit will be the student coming to the principal saying "There is a crazy man with a gun entering the school," to which the principal responds "Well, there are crazy men with guns in real life too, so you'll just have to accept it."

Re:I picture a Monty Python skit

[dgatwood]

That's sort of what I was thinking, except minus the comedy bit. The same argument could be made for a lot of horrible things, e.g. it's good for boys to get beaten and girls to get molested because there are scumbags out there who would try to do that to them when they're adults. The argument for bad teachers is a specious argument, as the logical extension of such an argument readily demonstrates.

The fact of the matter is that kids already deal with plenty of people who are incompetent and hard to get along with. They deal with their siblings, their friends, etc., all of whom can be stubborn and wrong at times. They'll learn how to deal with that just fine without having teachers who don't know what they're talking about. By the time they're teenagers, they will inevitably learn to challenge authority and push boundaries anyway without that "help".

Re:I picture a Monty Python skit

[Velex]

e.g. it's good for boys to get beaten and girls to get molested because there are scumbags out there who would try to do that to them when they're adults.

Oddly, when I was in middle school (early 90s), that applied to boys, e.g. "He stole your lunch and knocks your books out of your hands in the hall. Live with it. It's part of being a boy" was something I was literally told. Of course, if I would have decked him like I wanted to (and should have in hindsight) I would have had a few detentions.

Yet for some reason the same didn't apply to girls. e.g., no one would dare tell an adolescent young woman that some injustice is just part of being a woman.

Then on the other, other hand there was this one teacher who had a question on a test "What makes things stay on the ground?" My little brother answered "gravity" and was promptly graded wrong. Upon inquiry, we discovered that the correct answer was air pressure. C'est la vie.

Re:I picture a Monty Python skit

[dgatwood]

Then on the other, other hand there was this one teacher who had a question on a test "What makes things stay on the ground?" My little brother answered "gravity" and was promptly graded wrong. Upon inquiry, we discovered that the correct answer was air pressure. C'est la vie.

Wow. Just... wow. I hope your little brother pointed out that air pressure on the shuttle is the same as air pressure on Earth, give or take, yet strangely enough, things float around quite nicely. :-)

Re:I picture a Monty Python skit

[Thing 1]

I got the image of the Broken Window Fallacy. Next!

Re:I picture a Monty Python skit

[517714]

Air pressure is below the shuttle - that's what holds it up. Get with the program!

Re:I picture a Monty Python skit

[elrous0]

Lazy teachers and school administrators can get away with silliness and stupidity that would never be tolerated in the adult world. If an adult were attacked and went to the police to file charges, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't accept the police telling him "Hey, that's just part of being an adult. There's nothing we can do about it."

Re:I picture a Monty Python skit

[Kilrah_il]

Well, close enough: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1BJfDvSITY

Re:I picture a Monty Python skit

[Shotgun]

You've never actually had anything stolen and tried to file a police report, have you? Yeah, they might dutifully act like they're taking notes, and may file some paperwork. But unless you provide them with evidence of who stole your stuff, they won't do a thing to get it back for you. Basically, the response you get is "Hey, that's just part of being an adult. There's nothing we can do about it."

Re:I picture a Monty Python skit

[Pteraspidomorphi]

To me it reminds me of a short story I once read in a sci-fi anthology about a cannibal kid going to school and eating all the teachers, and all they'd do is say "he needs to express himself" and "we have to try and understand him". I think the writer had a deep trauma about this kind of educator. Or he was just nuts.

Anyway, if I'd written your Python-like skit, it would be a crazy STUDENT with a gun, and as the punchline he'd shoot the principal.

I'm okay with it...

[wandazulu]

...as long as the bad teacher isn't the metal/wood shop teacher or driving instructor.

Re:I'm okay with it...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're joking, but you're also right. The bad teach in my old high school was the driving instructor. He was constantly threatening and actively harassing students with the intent of causing depression. He was borderline psychotic. He'd been there for near ten years before he was fired (for sexual harassment no less) and only after I'd graduated.

The upside? I'm far better off than he ever was, or ever will be. Yet I still don't have a drivers license. Go figure.

Re:I'm okay with it...

[shermo]

You learn to drive in school? (serious question)

Re:I'm okay with it...

[cosm]

Many schools here in the United States offer drivers-ed classes, on a per-semester basis. One part of the class is in a desk, memorizing "Rules of the Road", the other is a series of driving sessions and eventually a test with the instructor. This is how it worked when I lived in Illinois, you received your permit from the high-school, and once you turned 16 you could go to the DMV and apply/test (again) for a license.

Re:I'm okay with it...

[Flea of Pain]

Yes and no in Canada. We have a drivers education program which you can enter at 15 and a half. Generally this course is taught through a school, as it is where you go to reach students of that age. The person teaching the course will not likely be a teacher per se, but will be a qualified drivers education instructor.

Re:I'm okay with it...

[compro01]

I did here in Canada. Theoretical classes at lunch hour for a couple weeks (20 hours) followed by a written test to get the learner permit, then followed by practical driving (6 hours) during class hours.

Re:I'm okay with it...

[Altus]

Where I'm from the drivers ed class is held at the school and I think organized by the school but it is a private company and you have to pay for the lessons. It is also held after hours (with driving time usually right after classes end). Of course here, drivers ed is not required to get your license, you simply have to pass the test. Drivers ed allows you to take the test 6 months earlier than if you didn't take the course and it gives a small benefit on your insurance as well.

I'm sure it varies a lot from state to state and possibly even from district to district. I would be interested to hear how its handled in other countries.

Re:I'm okay with it...

[xaxa]

In the UK its nothing to do with school.

You apply for a provisional license, the earliest you can get this is your 17th birthday. Then you can either take lessons with a driving instructor (most are very small companies/franchises), or with someone over 21 who's had a license for over three years (e.g. parent). Lessons are expensive, but the insurance for a learner driver is even more -- over a thousand pounds for a 17yo in the kind of car Americans would laugh at.

I haven't learnt to drive, and I'm 24. I think about half my friends can drive, but only one owns a car -- and he keeps asking if we want to go shopping at Ikea. I think he's trying to justify the expense; he doesn't use it to get to work. (This is typical of London, atypical of the rest of the UK.)

Bureaucracy.

[Irick]

A wonderful, wonderful system filled with useful findings that promote efficiency and good life practices.

What about classmates?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had enough trouble with bad classmates as a reflection of society. There's no need to extend this to teachers as well.

I had a teacher like that...

[easterberry]

Grade 9 computers. Kept trying to tell me that the CPU was the entire computer. I almost got detention a few times for refusing to back down on my stance that, no, in fact, it is not. I suppose I learned to check my teachers ahead of time so I could avoid having her again but if it weren't for me and my friend who also knew the first thing about computers the entire class would have been taught that a CPU and a PC were synonyms.

Re:I had a teacher like that...

[vlm]

Kept trying to tell me that the CPU was the entire computer.

Duh, like everyone knows that big box with the retractable cup holder in it is called the "hard drive". Even if its got a SSD in it. As if they'd know what a SSD is.

Then there's the old timers whom always called terminals "tubes" and even to this day call LCD displays "tubes".

Re:I had a teacher like that...

[bynary]

The customers that threw me for a loop were the ones that insisted on calling the entire computer a "modem." As in the following example:

Customer: I need to buy a new modem.
Me: All right. Who's your ISP?
Customer: (blank stare) Do I need to buy the monitor separately?
Me: (blank stare)
Customer: It keeps saying that I'm running out of memory.
Me: (light comes on) Let me show you some of the computers we have in stock.

Re:I had a teacher like that...

[Itninja]

Kinda like how 'comic books' rarely are funny. Just wait...it'll happen to you too. One day iPods to go away but you will still call portable music players iPods. Or mobile phones will become entirely satellite driven but you'll still call them cell phones ;P

Re:I had a teacher like that...

[endymion.nz]

At least they completely understand you when you tell them the tubes are clogged. :)

Re:I had a teacher like that...

[DoofusOfDeath]

I'd say both usages are common enough that either definition is valid.

In my opinion, anyone claiming that exactly one of those two definitions is the correct one, was wrong.

Re:I had a teacher like that...

[IICV]

Man, what a synecdouche.

(Because I'm afraid that sentence will be too short to get past the lameness filter, here's some clarification)

Re:I had a teacher like that...

[PitaBred]

Half of the problem there is that the school probably reassigned her to computers because she was the most skilled in them of all the teachers. No, I'm not kidding.

And then she has to keep her authority in class. How does she do what with some smart-ass kid telling her she's wrong? So of course her gut instinct is to try to shut you down. And because she can't be seen as weak and doesn't have the information to actually know the answer, she simply uses her authority to "overrule" you.

The other half was that she wasn't a good teacher, because if she was, she would have told you that "we'll discuss that after class", and then would have listened to you for a few minutes after class and used the opportunity to learn.

Re:I had a teacher like that...

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the same teacher!!!!

A computer is made of a monitor, CPU, mouse, and keyboard. AGGHHH!!

I went to my guidance counselor, got an A put on my transcript for her class, and got transferred into Film.

Film was awesome!

Re:I had a teacher like that...

[easterberry]

Why does being wrong about something take away her authority? I've corrected other teachers and what they've done is: stopped, checked what I said, gone either A: "Nope, I was right." or B: "whoops, I guess I was misinformed". If your grasp over your class is so tenuous that if you make any mistake you think it'll cost you your authority then you aren't fit to be a teacher.

Re:I had a teacher like that...

[Deathanatos]

+1 for standing up. I had to not back down in a high-school level class on "Zero is an even number."

Re:I had a teacher like that...

[Anonymous Coward]

And "film" probably describes what you did in that class about as much as "CPU" describes a computer. And I don't even mean that "film" even a bad name. You may have used some actual film in part of that class (as a CPU is part of the whole system that people often call a CPU).

Either realize that it's normal for people to refer to things more generically, or be an asshole about both. You can't have it both ways.

Re:I had a teacher like that...

[atheistmonk]

I have no idea where they'd get that from. Everyone knows they're called harddrives.

Re:I had a teacher like that...

[PitaBred]

That was my point. I was simply stating things from her point of view.

We don't hire smart people to be teachers, by and large. We hire people who can deal with kids, and then train them on what to teach.

Re:I had a teacher like that...

[L4t3r4lu5]

Similar anecdote regarding a question on a mock GCSE paper.

Q: A friend of your gets a virus on his computer. Do you:
a) Give him a copy of your antivirus software.
b) Tell him to go buy some antivirus software from a store.
c) Leave him to it, it's probably nothing.
d) [Some other dogshit answer].

Seeing as this didn't account for anything apart from letting the teacher know, once again, that I knew more about the technical side of ICT than she did, I answered a). I was given a mini lecture about copyright (you meant software licensing, love), theft (good one), file sharing, and some crappy analogies. Obviously my reply was "My antivirus program is free. Look up AVG on Google. And ClamAV."

Needless to say I was still wrong. Still, IT GCSE is almost "This is a CD drive, this is a keyboard, this is how you make text bold in a seven year old office package" anyway.

More Theoretical Nonsense

[happy_place]

My daughter had a bad English teacher this year. She was a disorganized mess, who lost most of the assignments, did no follow up, placed random weights on assigned grades, and unlike ALL other teachers she had this year, NEVER had midterm grades ready for Parent-Teacher conferences. She used the excuse that she was working on her advanced degrees, and didn't have a lot of time to spare this year. We moved to this school district and believed her. Come to find out she's one of those teachers the veteran parents of kids know to avoid. Up to this year, my daughter was gung-ho about writing, now she claims to hate it. She used to enjoy discussing literature, now she only reads what's safe. I've got a lot of un-teaching to do, as a result. Perhaps there's a valuable life lesson burried under the pile of lost assignments this teacher never graded, but I'm not putting up with this sort of walking trainwreck of a teacher ever again. All in all, this is what comes of professional educators attempting to rationalize mediocrity. It's all theoretical, and no one is ever affected because it's safely academic.

Re:More Theoretical Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Professional educators don't like useless teachers either. When our colleagues can't do their jobs, it makes life more difficult for everyone who has to work with them. It also justifies all the "teachers are worthless" BS that is constantly thrown at a profession full of hard-working and competent people who toil constantly for little pay and less appreciation.

Re:More Theoretical Nonsense

[ndsbriand]

I have a similar story. In Junior High, my daughter had a choir teacher that was terrible. Until that experience, she loved singing. After that year, she hated it. It took me three years of gently working with her to convince her to give choir another shot. When she finally did give it a try again, she loved it. If I hadn't worked so hard to undo the damage caused by that one, poor teacher, my daughter would have never rediscovered her love of singing.

One bad teacher can ruin a student for life!

Re:More Theoretical Nonsense

[jm_sullivan]

Sadly, it is much easier for people like Zenna to promote the idea that bad teachers have a purpose than to fire them.

I have a few friends who are administrators at schools and the process to fire a high school teacher or college professor is long, adversarial and political.

I think everyone has had a bad teacher at one point or another. The best way to get rid of them may be to go confront them(politely) and tell them why you think they were horrible. Just make sure its well past graduation when you do it.

Re:More Theoretical Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

She is an English teacher. They rank slightly above real estate agents in how useless they are. They assign books, discuss the plot, and teach no skills. All of my English teachers could have been replaced with a reading list, cliff's notes and homework assignments. Seriously, I can't recall a single lesson or skill I learned from any English teacher I have ever had after fifth grade, when they stopped focusing on grammar, and we just started reading books all the time.

Re:More Theoretical Nonsense

[Paul Fernhout]

"She used to enjoy discussing literature, now she only reads what's safe. I've got a lot of un-teaching to do, as a result. Perhaps there's a valuable life lesson burried under the pile of lost assignments this teacher never graded, ..."

Unschooling?
http://www.holtgws.com/whatisunschoolin.html

That schools are unreformable?
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"""
I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises--no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system.
    Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there.
"""

That schools are more and more like prisons every year?
http://www.thewaronkids.com/

Re:More Theoretical Nonsense

[ProfBooty]

as an educator where do you see all of the tax money going?

Just one problem with this...

[Millennium]

The teacher does have a point, in that bad teachers can indeed provide a valuable lesson. The problem is, they're supposed to be teaching something else, and that subject suffers even while students get this other type of learning. I find the idea that this is a worthwhile trade to be questionable at best.

Re:Just one problem with this...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct. In th eschools, the teachers are supposed to be teaching something else. It is my understanding (not my personal experience) that the military does provide excellent instruction in how to work with and around the semi-competent lackwits placed in a position of authority by virtue of having been commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant (or equivalent rank in services with "creative" rank titles).

Re:Just one problem with this...

[biryokumaru]

... services with "creative" rank titles ...

Oh, you mean the Navy?

Re:Just one problem with this...

[blackraven14250]

Give them a bad teacher for a useless elective, not a primary skill. Problem solved.

Teenagers

[vlm]

'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

You're assuming he's talking about teachers?

Isn't his description remarkably similar to the stereotypical teenager view of their parents? At least occasionally when they're arguing?

So, thats a great experience for the parents that are wrapped around their kids finger and/or want to be their kids best friend or parent, but a waste for all the other kids with "normal" parent / teen relationships.

Another issue is all posts, so far, assume he means incompetence on an absolute scale. However, even if your staff is completely composed of nobel prize winners, theres always going to be that one teacher that is the stupidest. So, in that way, the entire story is meaningless, unless he's advocating a single teacher in a one room schoolhouse.

Irony

[Manip]

She was being ironic.

Genius is believing two opposing thoughts at once

[jeko]

Ms Atkins had told the paper that schools should not try to get rid of every inadequate teacher.

...

She added she believed it was the responsibility of each school to weed out bad teachers.

Perhaps Ms. Atkins could have used better teachers, or at the very least, better meds.

So....the lesson is....

[fataugie]

if you're a fuck up...there's a place in education for you, too? "See Johnny? Mr. Dumbass is a good example. We're not judgemental...if you can fog a mirror...there's a place for you at our school!"

Is that the message they're trying to send?

Encouraging disrespect for authority figures...

[mooingyak]

I like it.

Re:Encouraging disrespect for authority figures...

[Chrutil]

William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.

Gee thanks. Now I have coffee dripping out of my nose and a yucky monitor.
Hysterical sig.

OK, so bad experiences can "build character"...

[ITBurnout]

...but do they make your SAT scores any better?

in other news...

[ifeelswine]

Good teachers can be bad for students

From the Article....

[AndrewBC]

"Ms Atkins, who is leaving her job at the end of August to take up a role with a private education company, said state education could learn lessons from the way industry works."

And there is your silver lining!

Wrong lesson

[Spazmania]

What does it say about Zenna Atkins' supervisors if she thinks students should learn to live with incompetent bosses instead of the smart move: finding employment outside the reach of the incompetents.

Re:Wrong lesson

[couchslug]

"finding employment outside the reach of the incompetents."

Finding an alternate universe would be quite an accomplishment!

Re:Wrong lesson

[AuMatar]

Simple- that doesn't exist.

Re:Wrong lesson

[Spazmania]

Then apparently I found one. In two decades of work I've only suffered two six-month jobs in which any incompetence in the organization had a major impact on my work. Only one of those involved a specific individual I considered incompetent. Even then I considered him a talented guy. He was just too much of hard head, so while he made many good decisions he couldn't be persuaded to backtrack on critical bad ones.

I disagree...

[clong83]

This person clearly doesn't know what it's like to be on the brunt end of a truly terrible teacher/authority figure and have no power. I got a BUNCH of rejection letters from colleges in late January/early February due to "Incomplete applications". In short, the high school had never sent my transcripts/secondary school report to any of the universities I applied to. I only got into one school, and it was the school where I had forged the secondary school report myself. (I was truthful, and I at that point I had my suspicions about the guidance office doing their job...)

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:I disagree...

[Anonymous Cowpat]

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...)

The correct response is to say "alright" and burst into uncontrollable floods of tears. The more manly you are the rest of the time, the better.

Re:I disagree...

[DeadDecoy]

If you really don't trust them, you could have always gotten a sealed-letter transcripts to mail to the schools of your choice. Though I only do that for stuff I'm truly paranoid about having idiots manage. Hindsight is 20-20 :P.

Re:I disagree...

[Antisyzygy]

I had a teacher in high school who taught AP World History. Even though I graduated with honors, and took every advanced class I could, I never could get a good grade in her course. She graded me very harshly, and only the girls seemed to get good marks. I anyone complained she always said something to the effect "You think that my class is hard? Well, college will be much harder than that if you decide to try to get in!". She always made college sound like the hardest experience one could ever attempt, and actively discouraged people through her grading and insistence that college was harder on people than what she pulled. Funny thing about that. I skipped my senior year to take calculus, linear algebra and some general eds. at the local community college, I went to a full-fledged university (one the aforementioned teacher recommended) after two years, graduated with a degree in Mathematics three year later, and now I am a graduate student going for my Ph.D. in Mathematics. Taking college courses WAY EASIER than she ever made it sound.

Re:I disagree...

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

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:I disagree...

[scamper_22]

Sounds like perfect training to me. Get kids to believe they have to accept bad people in positions of authority and they have no choice to leave the system.

Give them 20 years, and they'll be adults will to accept being at the mercy of a public school monopoly run by teacher unions and you have no choice, but to accept their right to your money.

Re:I disagree...

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you please elaborate for me, the ignorant European, what it means "high school had never sent my transcripts/secondary school report to any of the universities I applied to"? Cause the application process here is lot different. You get a high school diploma, then you apply at the university, go to exams (each university holds its own exams), get marks on them and together with the marks on your high school diploma you get rated on some math formula. This is is. The high school is not obliged in any way to the university, in fact they are quite separate.

Re:I disagree...

[clong83]

Sure. This was before the days of online applications, so things may have changed some, but the idea is this:

You get the application from the university, and in it is a form intended for the guidance counselor or principal. You give them this form, and they must fill it out with accurate information, sign it, and follow any other instructions included on it. Usually the form merely asks a bunch of questions about the school itself, such as the size, demographics, typical GPA, percentage of students that go on to college, etc, etc. Just some context for the rest of your application.

Usually the guidance counselor/principal/administrator must simply return the form, filled out, and enclose an official transcript from the school along with it. The thing is, they return it directly to the university, not to the student. So the student has no way of knowing for sure whether or not it has been turned in, they only have the counselor's word on it. Generally nowadays, the university has an online application page where you can see any missing items. Would have been nice...

Re:I disagree...

[Backward Z]

This sounds more like a problem of poor administration than poor teaching.

Re:I disagree...

[clong83]

Oh, don't worry, there were plenty of bad teachers too! Example: I got an A in Chemistry and didn't know what a "Periodic Table" was.

Re:I disagree...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

so sue them already

Oh well.

[digitig]

Every government department should have a useless official.

Uh Huh

[MightyMartian]

And by the same extension, we shouldn't yank the licenses of bad drivers, because should learn to drive down the road even if there is a maniac who drives at 90mph while applying makeup and talking on a cell phone.

School, for better and for worse, is nothing like working life. A student is pretty much stuck in the class he or she is assigned to, cannot simply quit even if a bad teacher makes the experience, and the necessary education, impossible.

Bad teachers should be removed just like bad accountants, bad lawyers and bad doctors. Making excuses like this for the inept is pretty damned questionable to me.

Re:Uh Huh

[endymion.nz]

Hmm. Imagine the quality of individual teaching would attract if they were paid similarly to doctors, accountants and lawyers. Hey, your average landscape gardner or rubbish truck driver makes more money than a high school teacher.

Sadly

[copponex]

Sadly your boss at your crappy minimum wage job is probably earning more than your teacher. Less than average pay, less than average teachers, less than average education.

I'll bet half the reason public schools in wealthy areas do so much better is not because the parents give more of a shit, but because it's more likely that the teachers want to live in that area. That, and it's easier to concentrate when you're not worrying about how to make ends meet before you're legally allowed to drive.

Re:Sadly

[migla]

Good point. Notice the word "half".

There is not much in favour of a kid growing up in a "bad" neighbourhood. Here in sweden,m there is one thing, though: Only in a "bad " neighbourhood (our"bad neighbourhoods aren't as bad as the ones in the US. No gang killings and such, yet) a kid can experience cultural diversity. "Good" neighbourhoods are packed with white uptight ... "blind" people. So far, I think our "bad" neighbourhood is a better place for a human being that a "good" neighbourhood. When the human being gets to be a teenager, I'm not so sure any more. Will our economic and academic .... comparative"eliteness" keep the kid out of trouble?
Anyway, as it is today, I try to shield the kid from the middle class "normality junkies" that would pack the "better" neighbourhoods...

Re:Sadly

[xaxa]

Teachers don't like crap schools (in crap areas) because there's less satisfaction in the job, and more pointless stress (from dealing with badly behaved children). Parents in crap areas don't care if their children fail at school (after all, they failed school and they're 'OK'), so they don't encourage their children to succeed at school.

The teachers I know wouldn't choose to live near their school -- they'd rather not see the children they teach in social situations. But that might be because they teach at crap-ish schools, so the children are probably drinking/smoking/fighting/etc outside.

Making ends meet isn't a problem (story is about the UK). Driving isn't essential either.

Re:Sadly

[xaxa]

In the UK that completely depends where you are. Large towns are very, very mixed. There are perhaps more barriers between social class than between race in such places -- you're more likely to hear slightly derogatory terms like "chav", "toff" or "yummy mummy".

I went to a private school (parents paid), and a third of the class wasn't white-British. Granted, this was in one of the "least white" large cities in the UK (not London). Most of the parents were probably "normality junkies", but skin colour was irrelevant to that. They owned houses in the nice bits of the city, and had successful businesses or respectable careers.

I did recently walk past a large group of about 100 children in London. My friend remarked that they were all white, which seemed strange. Their t-shirts were embroidered "American School of London". They're all white on the website, too.

Re:Sadly

[OnePumpChump]

More important than the pay is the bullshit that teachers have to put up with. If kids are failing, it's their fault, no matter what's wrong at home or what is wrong with the test, and they'll take shit from both parents and government for it. It's their responsibility to teach safe sex, no! abstinence!, no that's not the government's job! (but teach abstinence!). No matter what they're teaching or how, they are conducting communist indoctrination. Or they are teaching kids witchcraft, which is the key focus of Outcome Based Education. But above all, they bear all responsibility for the future success or lack thereof of their students, despite none of that being their responsibility, that's for the parents and the church! All the parents except for me. Except when I disagree with what they're teaching (they're teaching condoms! they're teaching homosexuality! they're teaching masturbation! I don't even know what I mean by that!), then it's my responsibility...except I won't actually do anything about it EXCEPT BLAME THE TEACHERS.

Compared to that, low pay is a minor complaint.

Re:Sadly

[JimFive]

Parents in crap areas don't care if their children fail at school (after all, they failed school and they're 'OK'), so they don't encourage their children to succeed at school.

I see this attitude a lot and I think it is incorrect and quite probably classist. Parents in "crap areas" do want their children to be better off than they are, but they don't know how to help their children succeed. Parents in "crap areas" are also often busy working to provide shelter, food, and clothing so that their children can survive. Success may sometimes take a lower priority.

Dismissing the problems in "crap areas" as due to uncaring parents and teachers completely ignores the social issues that perpetuate those attitudes.
--
JimFive

Ben Tre

[spoonist]

is this the same person who said 'It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.'??

As a taxpayer...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am looking for the "Fire" button.

Translation

[Shivetya]

Workplace rules, or union rules, getting rid of them is more costly than letting you suffer with them

I can actually see a point

[russotto]

It might be good for every school to have one useless teacher, and for each student to have one class with him/her.

But only _one_. I don't really think we're in danger of having schools lacking in useless teachers, alas.

in other words:

[circletimessquare]

what doesn't kill you makes you stronger

so in the same brilliant pilosophical vein, let's make sure we feed our children chicken tainted with salmonella in the cafeteria, let's make sure we encourage our kids to text constantly when they drive to school, and let's make sure we bully them in the hallway

uh... no, asshole, i'm sorry, but bad experiences are accidental, not something you purposefully expose your children to. why? because it MIGHT ACTUALLY KILL YOU. ie: you might actually derail a child's academic experience. ther'es another word for your "philosophy": willful irresponsibility

it's amazing what kind of bullshit people will rationalize

darling Zenna Atkins: kindly keep your genius bathroom break epiphanies in the toilet stall, and shut the fuck up

Re:in other words:

[blai]

what doesn't kill you makes you stronger

what doesn't make you stronger might kill you, my friend.

Strongly disagree

[Yaddoshi]

I've had not one but two terrible math teachers in my schooling history. Consequently, even though my SAT scores showed a higher math aptitude, I never took calculus and basically avoided math for the remainder of my schooling, including college where I went for a degree in metalsmithing, even though the one class I showed real aptitude in was computer graphics programming. Hindsight is telling me I should have switched majors and found a tutor to overcome my lack of training.

A bad teacher should never be tolerated, and certainly not encouraged. I'd like to see Zenna Atkins theory applied to her medical practitioner, and see what sort of life lessons she gains there. But then, perhaps she has her point of view because she fits the bad teacher mold herself. Anyone know?

Case Closed on Public Education

[AthleteMusicianNerd]

I already believed public education was a failure, but this should alert the rest of the world.

Re:Case Closed on Public Education

[Anonymous Coward]

Much of the rest of the world (at least the good parts) have strong public education systems that have been very successful.

Re:Case Closed on Public Education

[Shimbo]

Much of the rest of the world (at least the good parts) have strong public education systems that have been very successful.

In any case public/private is irrelevant here, because private schools get inspected too.

Some schools can't achieve 1 good one

[Timmy D Programmer]

And thanks to the unions, good luck firing the bad ones.

Reductio ad absurdum

[Locke2005]

By that same token, every school should have a disgruntled student with a black trench coat and an AK47, so that kids can learn how to deal with psychopathic killers in the real world!

We could say the same for doctors

[quanticle]

By this person's argument, should hospitals tolerate bad doctors? I mean, both teachers and doctors have a strong impact on the people they're dealing with. They're both in positions of power over their students and patients, respectively. Most importantly, they can both cause harm when they're incompetent. I never hear about people preaching tolerance for bad doctors. So why should we tolerate bad teachers?

Another valuable life lesson...

[rbrander]

If you say stupid nonsense that is apparently devised to excuse incompetence and get you out of improving a bad situation, you get fired.

And I know just the public official to demonstrate this life lesson with. I'm sure that his sacrifice will be deeply appreciated by all the children instructed.

Of course, he might not see it that way, now that it's HIS life being screwed by the "life lesson". He was OK when it was just thousands of students.

Re:Another valuable life lesson...

[Anonymous Coward]

He is a woman. And she has already quit the post for a much better paid private sector job.

Re:Another valuable life lesson...

[krenrox]

Its not really that hard to read the article, is it? "As a leader you need to be making sure that these people are performing as well as they can, and if, frankly as well as they can isn't good enough, then you have to have the courage of your convictions and get rid of them", she said. You didn't have to get too far into it before this quote came up. Its pretty obvious that despite some flippant language, Zenna Atkins didn't suggest that we should seek out or retain bad teachers. SHE certainly doesn't need to lose HER job over it. SHE is leaving the job anyway.

School of hard knocks?

[earlymon]

That's what a classroom for a kid is supposed to be?

It's not tough enough for any kid to figure out what's going on in the world?

In other news today:

Teacher Provided Grant to Study Creative Defense of Incompetency
NEA Announces Press Release Tomorrow

It's true

[Waffle Iron]

Where would 1970s progressive rock have been if Roger Waters or Roger Hodgson had never had a bad teacher?

I agree ...

[marcobat]

I learn and studied many things in spite of the best efforts of my public school teachers to discourage me. (yes, professoressa Monti i talking about you)

What a load of ...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of life lessons from the other students.

There is no need and no room for a bad teacher.

Fine, as long as they don't mind useless students

[noidentity]

If they excuse some useless teachers, they had better excuse some useless students and pass them regardless of what they do. After all, it's a life lesson for the teacher and other students, right? Right???

So Dumb!

[h-nu]

This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard an "educator" say, and that is saying something.
35 years of teaching high school physics, taking upgrading courses in physics, math and teaching technique, working my butt off to be as good as I can be, and I hear this!
Incompetent teachers kill student motivation, cause conflict in the school and bring the public system into disrepute. They also encourage ignorance and cynicism in their students.
No wonder the public distrusts us.
Root them out!
Drivel!

Bad Teachers Are A Bad Idea

[genealotech]

Having worked in a K-8 public school, I can assure you this Chairman is completely out of touch. There is more to being a teacher than just showing up for work, and having an incompetent teacher makes the students further behind in their studies, lower in their test scores, the students (namely the middle school aged students) can sense when someone cannot handle classroom discipline and as a result you end up with multiple incidents where students get hurt in the classroom. I've witnessed this happening, not only did the parents hate it, the students hated it more. What's worse, low income students look to their teachers as a role model for what you can do with your life with an education. An incompetent teacher only sets a really bad example to these students. The other teachers resent it because they have to pick up the slack for what the incompetent one is not doing. This is definitely NOT a good idea.

She's just looking on the bright side.

[v(*_*)vvvv]

Students will cope with bad teachers. But the best lessons are learned from the good ones.

Do children benefit from bad parents? No. They will cope, but they suffer their entire lives.

The real solution is have good teachers teach about bad teachers.

Now, with all that being said, this person's words are being put way out of context. She's just looking on the bright side, if you ask me, given bad teachers will never go away.

Mmm

[kikito]

By that same logic, every school should have a drug dealer and a child abuser, since those also "reflect society".

Re:Mmm

[Spy der Mann]

By that same logic, every school should have a drug dealer and a child abuser, since those also "reflect society".

And don't forget Blackjack, and hookers!

Come to think about it, forget about the bad teachers and child abusers.

Re:Mmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, most schools I know already do in fact have these. Maybe I just hung out with the wrong crowd.

Re:Fine, as long as they don't mind useless studen

[Halborr]

In my experience, they do. I have a friend that one day said, "I'm gonna fail every class so I can go to the Alternative High School." He did, and they moved him after he convinced the counselor that he wasn't going to try no matter what.

Yes.....and

[hackus]

Every corporation should have a bad CEO...at least one...

Oh wait....

-Hack

I take it...

[matthewv789]

Ms. Atkins is OK with the "valuable life lesson" being "I only learned 1/2 year worth of material this year, compared to 1 to 1-1/2 with a good teacher"?

Translation

[sjames]

These kids arrive with bright young minds ready to learn and achieve. We need to teach them to lower their expectations if they're to have any chance of getting along with the screwed up crapflood we call management today.

Depends on the goal

[Joey Vegetables]

If the goal is to produce trained, obedient monkeys to serve their corporate and governmental "betters," then yes, it's an invaluable lesson. (And trust me, that IS the goal.) If the goal were to truly educate, though, according to the classical or any other legitimate meaning of term, we would not tolerate bad teachers, any more than we'd tolerate a surgeon that killed most of his patients or an engineer who built bridges that constantly fall down.

Re:Depends on the goal

[JSBiff]

What's sad is that we tolerate bad teachers all the way up to the college level.

I've had plenty of good instructors, but I've also had my share of professors who, while they might be brilliant in their field, at proving mathematics, or researching computer algorithms, or whatever, where not skilled or gifted teachers.

Re:Genius is believing two opposing thoughts at on

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad teacher = comes to class drunk (everyday). Inadequate teacher = I am significantly smarter than them.

Neil Stephenson's DIAMOND AGE Agrees

[LandGator]

In The Diamond Age: A Young Victorian Lady's Illustrated Primer, the discussion between Nell and Miss Matheson regarding the manifest unsuitability of Miss Stricken (on page 322 of the 501 page edition, the conversion to your edition is left to the student as an exercise...) makes it very clear:

Miss Matheson smiled. "You are not far off the mark. Miss Stricken's phase of the curriculum comes perilously close to being without any real substance. Why do We bother with it then?" {snip}
"To teach you humility and self-discipline," Nell said. She had learned this from Dojo long ago.
"Precisely. Which are moral qualities."{snip}

I shall not forget Niven's Law and assume this opinion is shared by Mr Stephenson himself, but perhaps it is.

Can you tell if your teacher is bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

This paper needs more exposure. It demonstrates using some clever statistical arguments and the peculiarities of the USAF Academy to show
that what students perceive as bad teaching is generally not the case.

www.economics.harvard.edu/.../carrell%2Bwest%2Bprofessor%2Bqualty%2Bjpe.pdf

I agree

[dannys42]

All this pandering to children and keeping them "happy" is a terrible idea... they just grow up thinking the world is a happy place, which just sets them up for disappointment. We should make sure they have a miserable childhood so they won't expect much when they grow up. Then when they get stuck in a dead-end job, in an apartment that's about to be demolished, and a relationship that reminds them of their parents because of all the yelling, they'll be quite happy because this is the life they knew and expected. They'll save to themselves, "hey I've got a job, an apartment, and a relationship... this is way better than my childhood." It's much better than waking up every day saying to yourself "why can't I be happy again, like I was when I was 7". Make them miserable; think of the children!

Having Bad Teachers Not Fuck Up Kids

[Greyfox]

Really relies on parents to pay attention to their kids and their kids' education, and most parents won't. At least not until my regime implements a license for breeding. So I must respectfully disagree with the thesis of Mr. Atkins' argument.

My regime would also impale bad teachers.

Wider application of "new teaching"

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this? Brought to you by the same people who came up with "new math" or whatever language system lets students graduate without being able to put together a coherent paragraph?

Let's keep the "bad teacher" so the kids learn the lesson that some people can be really bad at their job and still keep it. It will give them something to aspire to, like a teacher version of Wally in the Dilbert cartoons.

I know, let's make sure every school has at least one undisciplined school bully so that kids learn an important life lesson about bullying.

bad teachers not doing their work=totally useless

[konmpar]

I had a few experiences too at my university. Some bad teachers, other too lazy, other having other things rather that their educational duties. Let me bring an example from my university... there are four classes right now in my mind that if you check the final results of the exam would see an 10-20-30% success in every semester for years until a teacher got changed.... What the heck is happening with the others 90-80-70%??? Are they too stupid??? i also know too many coleages of mine that had late to get their degree or they didn't got it yet because of those courses... is this right or educational?? so i think bad teachers at schools are more useless rather than an advantage for the kids-students....

They were/are? out there

[ynotds]

I tried teaching for a while in my early 20s before escaping back to the early days of commercial computing. Years later, by chance, I found out that one of the senior masters had an eye for boys. As far as I know he never crossed the boundary in the school situation where he was recognised as both an outstanding teacher in his field and as the disciplinarian of junior students, back when such a role was still seen as necessary.

One more reason to keep homeschooling

[medcalf]

Not that we need any more examples, but this just provides one more reason to keep homeschooling.

More accurate translation

[winwar]

Getting rid of a poor teacher requires documentation. As documentation requires a manager to do actual work, we all know that is right out.

should they tech life lessons like

[mehemiah]

Great Teacher Onizuka?

Fine as a classroom exercise, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

... it's not fine to waste a year of a student's education for this.

Here's an idea: Get good teachers to deliberately "play bad" for a day and have the students discuss what life was like to have a bad teacher for one day and how they might deal with an ineffective coworker or other person they had to deal with on an ongoing basis "in real life."

Of course, most kids and teens probably have at least one unreliable peer who is unknowingly teaching them how to deal with such people.

Other lessons for real life

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I teach them that sucking a policeman's nightstick is a great way to avoid parking tockets? It works for me!

Yep

[wandazulu]

Yes, at 16 we stayed after school for an hour, got some classroom instruction that really amounted to being able to recognize a stop sign, had a written test that, I think, gave you a passing grade if you wrote your full name, and then I was given a "blue card".

This card let me sign up for "range", which was, for me, sitting in a broken simulator, in a freezing trailer in a Chicago winter, watching 16mm movies of driving around sunny Pasadena, California, in the early 1960s.

Having passed that (not sure how I "passed" it...), we got to get behind a real car, on real streets, for two one-hour sessions, where we proved that we knew how to drive. After that, I could apply and got my real drivers license, and I was off to the races, so to speak.

It definitely qualifies as a WTF, but as that was basically mine and all my friends experiences, we didn't have anything else to compare to; I hear it's much harder in Europe.

Mixed results

[ynotds]

In grade five at a liberal protestant church school our class burnt maybe a dozen teachers over the year, some in as little as three days. At least a few of us went on to make significant contributions in fields requiring at least intellectual competence.

In the first ever year 12 class at a then new suburban state secondary school, our math teacher fell ill and was never properly replaced. Three of us pretty much took on the job of keeping the math classes going and between us got better personal results than we otherwise might have.

But more than once in more recent times I've had to try to help youngsters who had relevant aptitude try to recover from the disaster of an incompetent math teacher at the wrong moment of their education, not an easy task.

While, thankfully, everyone is different, I lean towards more concern that emerging social dynamics, amplified in the cities, are producing a challenge-challenged generation who might really need to keep our richer experiences within reach when we would rather be retiring.

Raving lunatic - chairman of Education Standards?

[c0lo]

actually surviving that environment can be an advantage.

Surviving? In what sense?
If in the ad literam sense , I don't think the parents send the kids to school with the purpose of making them fit to eat bugs in a survival challenge.
If metaphorically speaking, I seem to see a distinction between survival and development. To use the metaphor track, the veterans in every war survived, even after loosing limbs/sight/etc - I really doubt the experience worth for them as individuals. To put in another way: since when is the school an experimental ground for an enhanced/accelerated evolutionary selection? (eugenics, anyone?)

Last but not least: a wise person can play stupid, for a long time if necessary, but never vice versa. Consequence: if survival would be in the scope of education, better hire a teacher that can play the evil (but knows when to stop) and get rid of bad teachers. Even yesterday is late to do it!

She's pretty incompetent herself.

[JustNiz]

How the hell does someone this clueless get to be in such an important position?

Learning to deal WITH incompetent teachers maybe a good lesson, but not at the cost of failing to learn FROM them for a whole academic year.

Kids don't get a break on their exam scores just because they have experience of incompetent teachers.

Hell yes

[kabdib]

A big, sarcastic "Thank you, Mr. Helms," is what I said when I walked out on the worst teacher I ever had. I ditched his useless 7th grade math class in the middle of a quiz, went to the school library and started reading about real math, at my own pace.

I know you're not out there, Mr. Helms, but thank you for being enough of a loser and a jerk and a world-class bore that I finally got fed up and started learning math on my own, without teachers to hold me back.

(That school eventually threw me out; another really good thing. Honestly, being a reject of the US "cookie cutter" school system is not necessarily bad).

Every school has a useless teacher

[Anonymous Coward]

His name is "Coach".

Including the one who assaulted me in 2nd grade?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considered a disruptive influence because I asked too many questions (I think it was two), this fine example of professor professorious raked my face with her nails. Um, what was I supposed to learn from that? Duck? Hide? Never ask?

Educational Official was probably a teacher....

[TimeOut42]

and probably not a good one. Hey, give him a break, he's just trying to make himself feel better for short changing the students.

TimeOut

How unsurprising...

[zkiwi34]

In that most everyone is whining about how they all had teachers that sucked. Their attitude tells me that they suck far far more than the teacher they think is/was bad.

I'm sure they have many other adults they interacted with before they failed to grow up who they think sucked. I'm sure they would be equally aggravated by such as Plato, Socrates on down to such as Feynman.

IMHO, the lady from OFSTED has it right. If you cannot cope with something you think is bad in your student life, then the only one who sucks is you.

That's not the problem.

[sserendipity]

We've got too many - not too few. But if he intends to reduce it to one, I'm all for it.

Just What We Need

[Anonymous Coward]

A new wacko eduction theory from Zenna Atkins, who assuredly has risen to the level of her incompetence.

Children have society to reflect the difficulties of society. We don't need to mirror it in miniature in a school. That's clearly wrong thinking based on some pretty incorrect assumptions on her part.

Mr. T says: "I pity the fool that has her for a teacher. Bring on the A-Team and fuck those Z-Team losers."

The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher

[Paul Fernhout]

According to NYS Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto, almost all school teachers scar children in common ways:
http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"Look again at the seven lessons of schoolteaching: confusion, class assignment, dulled responses, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional self-esteem, surveillance -- all of these things are good training for permanent underclasses, people derived forever of finding the center of their own special genius."

See also:
"State Controlled Consciousness"
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html
"Schooling is a form of adoption. You give your kid up in his or her most plastic years to a group of strangers. You accept a promise, sometimes stated and more often implied that the state through its agents knows better how to raise your children and educate them than you, your neighbors, your grandparents, your local traditions do. And that your kid will be better off so adopted.
    But by the time the child returns to the family, or has the option of doing that, very few want to. Their parents are some form of friendly stranger too and why not? In the key hours of growing up, strangers have reared the kid.
    Now let's look at the strangers of which you (interviewer) was one and I was one. Regardless of our good feeling toward children. Regardless of our individual talents or intelligence, we have so little time each day with each of these kids, we can't possibly know enough vital information about that particular kid to tailor a set of exercises for that kid. Oh, you know, some of us will try more than others, but there simply isn't any time to do it to a significant degree. ..."

Yes minister

[Falconhell]

Covered this beatifully, see

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORLN45b64n0

From about the 3:30 Mark.

Hillarious!

Is this our society

[cubicle]

Is Humanity so bad that bad teachers will teach us how to cope with our inevitable bad employers, authority figures, and others. How about we start rewarding good work ethics and values and kick these rotters to the curb

wtf

[orthicviper]

every kid needs to learn how to deal with trolls like Zenna Atkins, an important life lesson

NO! NO! FUCK YOU, NO!!!

[Chas]

Sorry! My parents didn't pay their taxes for McJob prep school.

Nor did I pay my college tuition for McJob prep school!

I'm was there to be EDUCATED. Not TRAINED.

The idiot who thinks that we should impose lousy teachers on students (ESPECIALLY at lower grade levels) needs to have their face slapped with a live cattle prod.

Repeatedly.

As someone is meticulously breaking every joint in every digit on their hands.

This kind of handout justification for the protection of totally sub-par teachers turns my stomach.

Life's lessons are inevitable.

[Anonymous Coward]

When the poor sod who made this sad comment gets fired for it, he will learn a valuable life lesson, maybe. That is, if he's paying attention, he will.

and isn't this why Universities produce...

[Anonymous Coward]

... such excellent graduates? Everyone with a B Sc has had at least one incompetent prof. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger!

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Why must I survive an environment of incompetent people? Name someone who was successful after surrounding themselves with incompetent people. The natural reaction of avoiding incompetent people should be encouraged rather than suppressed.

PuFF

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how many kids don't "survive" a bad teacher/environment? :P Learning to "survive" a bad math teacher isn't going to help you become a good engineer. And if you could learn it on your own you wouldn't need the school! ^_^
Why should a school reflect society? Isn't that just going to instill society's bad traits even further into the future? Sounds like another lame excuse for a poor education system that doesnt know how to properly administer itself.

Self-justification

[Drakkenmensch]

By claiming every education organisation should have an incompetent person at their employ, perhaps Zenna Atkins is seeking to justify her own chairman position?

Yeah, ok

[hesaigo999ca]

The bad ones make you appreciate the good ones that much more. Also if ever you want to help teach someone something, you will know what NOT to do.

2+2=5

[jc42]

Funny TFA should use bad math as its illustration. My first thought from the title was of my high school math teacher in 9th grade. When I decided to read the entire (algebra) text the first month, and then ask for more math books, he reacted by telling me I "wasn't ready" and couldn't have the more advanced textbooks.

I thought he thought that I probably didn't understand it, so I started talking about some of the more advanced stuff in the book. It soon became obvious that he was the one who didn't understand all of it, and my asking for more advanced texts was a threat to his position of authority. So he wasn't just bad; he was acting as an active barrier to my education.

It didn't work, though. I had some friends at a nearby college who were happy to check books out of their library and loan them to me. So by the end of the year, I'd absorbed several geometry & trig books, plus first and second year calculus.

Yeah, I suppose one could argue that he was "good" for me. He got the idea across to me that the educational system could and would act as a barrier to education in topics that didn't fit its hierarchy or schedule. So if I really wanted to learn about something, I should ignore the educational system and simply tackle it myself.

But I'd counter this with the observation that he wasn't nearly the first so-called teacher who taught me this lesson. It had already happened any number of times, and sometimes I wasn't able to get access to the texts that I wanted. One of my memories was a 6th-grade teacher who, when she realized that I knew everything she was supposed to teach, quietly let me sit at a desk in the back, ignore the class, and read whatever books I'd been able to get. But she was a rare exception. He was the norm, in my experience. And I'd argue that, while one or two such "bad" teachers might teach a useful lesson, it's not useful for most of the teachers to be like this, and the helpful ones so rare that I can count them on the fingers of one hand.

So I'd say that, contrary to the approach of TFA, the bad teachers should be limited to a very small number. If this were done, it would be a major improvement.

Bad teachers can be good for students ...

[arisvega]

... but good teachers are better.

Here's a bad apple for you

[TheHawke]

If you want a bad teacher, here's an example.

This was back in the late 80's when this happened so this dates me. There was one English teacher who would make certain student's homework "disappear" then claimed that she never received it. This was obviously having an impact on their grades and school performance. So yours truly chimed in on making copies using either carbon sheets or the school's copier. We got the endorsement from our home room teacher and started to use the school's copier to make "backups" of our homework.This caught her in the open, forcing her to back down and start accepting the homework like a good teacher. We never did have hard proof of her making it disappear on purpose though. Several years after I graduated she moved on, either being sacked or resignation.

Pedophiles wanted

[scottymack]

This warped rationalization is the reason our school systems are failing. What's next? "Having a pedophile in each and every school will help our children learn that they need to be very careful when dealing with adults. That not all people are to be trusted ..."

Virtues of the Incompetent

[Anonymous Coward]

"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."

As regards the NHS, this is a variation of the "that which does not kill you, makes you stronger" argument. Unfortunately, sometimes it actually DOES kill you.

Just because you learn doesn't make it good

[Anonymous Coward]

This is stretching the saying, "Anything that doesn't kill me can only make me stronger," to absurd lengths. The saying is based on the fact that any stable person should learn something from any adverse situation. But that should be taken to mean that pain is never fully negative, not that pain is always positive. The net result can still be bad. Just because I might learn perseverance from having no arms doesn't make being chased down by a psycho with a chainsaw a good thing.

School prepared me for life

[Sectoid_Dev]

Most of the teachers I had were just doing their job, cycling yet another year of students through their class while collecting a pay check on their way to retirement. Not too different from the corporate environment I inhabit now.
There were a few really good teachers and a couple of heavy duty slackers who no longer made any pretense of caring if we learned. Of course there were a special few who saw the class room as their private domain to reign over their students as the mighty overlords they imagined themselves to be. Yeah pretty close to my experiences of 20+ years of life after university.

So I guess 'bad teachers' do contribute, but seriously, this is a rationalization from someone trying to convince you to eat shit and smile about it because they can't change the system.

equation

[adeft]

2+2=5 for greater values of 2

Let's leave this for real life, shall we?

[sunwolf]

...there are enough idiots out there without going out and hiring them.

Yeah I've heard this one before...

[exentropy]

Back when I was in the 7th grade I won a Countywide math competition because my forward-thinking teacher encouraged me to pursue math outside of class (i.e. with problem sets). The year after, I had a horrible teacher; the kind of math teacher who believes in busywork and doesn't try to spur creativity and self-initiative. My parents gave me the excuse 'someday you'll have to deal with people like this in the real world', but every night I detested my math homework, and lost an interest in the subject. After a year of hating the subject, I applied to enter the same competition and completely failed. In fact, I continued hating math through highschool. These teachers don't really damage kids that never had any skill / potential in the first place, but can destroy nascent interest.

As someone who had a terrible math teacher

[Anonymous Coward]

Frack you.

I had a high school math teacher so bad he couldn't solve problems from the textbook with the answers in the back. And he was teaching us. I never did manage to really progress into understanding Trigonometry and Calculus thanks to the deficiency in his understanding and teaching.

This teacher was so infamous that other teachers actually acknowledged as much in my college recommendation forms,

"[Anonymous Coward] has some gaps in his math background."

No kidding that's part of what my Senior year math teacher had to say about my math skills.

partially true

[Alan R Light]

As long as it's only one, or a few, bad teachers, this could be true.

However, it most definitely should not be in the first few years of elementary school, especially as in those grades a kid frequently only has one teacher. Kids need a chance to see what a good teacher is like before they run into the idiot that shows them that they should be willing to think for themselves.

Meh. I'd choose no schools before the American public schools anyway.