Re: let me rant

Posted by Rod in Smiths Falls, ON, on December 24, 2004 at 14:49:59 from (209.71.222.78):

In Reply to: Re: let me rant posted by Dean Barker on December 23, 2004 at 21:52:20:

This has been rodeo of hobby horses, but some interesting points have come up about handling students' dreams.

First, let me say that the effective teacher keeps his or her kids off balance all of the time. Kids work to restore their equilibrium and learn while doing so. Teaching is a series of encounters and opportunities with young people and kids are not blocks of steel. What works with one won't work the same with another.

Some kids need to be told they can do more. Some need to be toned down to face reality. A teacher makes dozens of decisions like these every day and they are often right, because the teacher, like the farmer, observes the kids and keeps track not only of how they are doing but has a mental path ahead for the kid's growth.

Of course that path involves making the kid into a smaller version of the teacher, only without the warts. This is one of the abuses of power that the reflective teacher will catch onto and learn to avoid.

The biggest abuse I have seen in my teaching career, though, has to do with kids' dreams, and so I join your rant: a virus is sneaking into kids' thinking that everyone can do whatever he/she wants, all she has to do is want it really bad. You know that the actual dream involves hard work, smarts, and some luck, but the kids of today seem to have not learned about the effort part. This leaves them with a sense of entitlement quite at odds with their willingness to work to improve their lot. I'm not talking about all kids by any means, but I spent the last two years of my career with a number of self-satisfied underachievers. I often likened teaching these individuals (and dealing with their parents) to pushing a rope uphill.

Motivational speakers show up at the school and preach the you-can-do-anything myth and nobody smells a rat. This in a time when it costs at least $16,000 per year for university. When families can't afford the cost -- 16% tax deduction, eh?-- it must be the kid's fault because everybody-can-do-anything, right? The neo-conservatives have cut public funding to where education is only for the well-to do and they've convinced those who can't afford it that they are themselves to blame. This strikes me as the worst sort of dishonesty.

Follow Ups:

• Re: let me rant steveormary 19:29:43 12/24/04 (0)

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