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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

Summary is misleading.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.

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

[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

[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

[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.

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."

I'm okay with it...

[wandazulu]

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

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...

[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.

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.

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.

Encouraging disrespect for authority figures...

[mooingyak]

I like it.

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.

It's true

[Waffle Iron]

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