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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.'"
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.
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.
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.