Saturday, February 09, 2013

Why It's OK to Hate Your Teachers

I will go into this in more detail later, but "teachers," at least the majority of them, never became teachers for "the chilllldreeeennnnzzz"

They became teachers because at the age of 18 they knew a degree in "education" required less math and a 9 month work year was 3 months shy of a real work year.  It was ALWAYS for them, and never for the student.

Thus, when you don't behave and make their job easy, they hate you.  But to quote The Spearhead.

In other words, the teachers – overwhelmingly female – don’t like them. Nor, apparently, do a number of NY Times commenters, who say it’s just desserts for all that male oppression of the past. Yes, that’s right: little kids who were born a few years ago must pay for the imagined sins of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers.

15 comments:

heresolong said...

I became a teacher because I was bored with my previous job and I didn't want to be an engineer. So far, eight years in, I'm quite enjoying it and the kids are pretty cool. Oh, Aerospace Engineering degree, not Education.

Anonymous said...

Oh bah! You pathetic noodninks! I don't think any of my teachers had a degree in Education. More typically, a BA in Mathematics or a B.Sc. in geophysics. My most formidable teacher, and headmistress of my school was MA (Oxen.) Yes, she was married. Her brother was the first head of the British SOE.

Anonymous said...

To all you parents, and to Aaron Himself, if you are contemplating spending $150000 to $200000 on your child's education, you are much better to spend it on a good private school rather than some rink-dink "college". A good school will actually teach your monster something, will civilize him, and give him entree to a network. Four or five years at a good school truly renders much of university superfluous.

Glen Filthie said...

There are exceptions to every rule, Heresolong - but they ARE the exception.

My brother-in-law is a conniving, rat-faced socialist clotpole with dyslexia. He is a school principal. His wife is a middle aged harridan and a militant feminist. They put on airs of intellectual and moral superiority that make me want to vomit and it is so bad I can't stand to be in the same room with them. I would be surprised if either have IQ's in the triple digits. They are unionized pooch-screwing scum of the worst sort, all they do is bitch about how tough their job is and whine about how they need more money to serve 'da cheerun'.

I have always hated teachers on general principals - it is nice to see all that 'hatey-hate-hateness' well justified, LOL.

Anonymous said...

Education schools have been fed by the dropouts from more demanding majors - even in the social sciences - since at least my college days over a generation ago. These people are the dregs of society.

Ryan Fuller said...

I think you're painting with too broad a brush here, Cap. While many got degrees in Education because it's not academically challenging and they want to "make a difference" by preaching left wing dogma to children, others definitely do not fit the mold and don't deserve the criticism leveled at them.

Eric S. Mueller said...

I'm not sure where Anonymous #2 is from, but in the U.S., public schools are taken out of property taxes. If you own property, you pay public school tax. I own a house in New Jersey, and almost $4000 of the nearly $6000 I pay a year in property taxes goes to the schools. If you send your children to private school, you get to pay twice. If you don't have children, tough. You're paying anyway. And if you homeschool like we do, you're paying anyway.

Amy said...

My long stint in the corporate world burned me out so I went into teaching. No Ed degree here, just a BA, and honestly, I did think I could change a few things by serving kids in the classroom.

Intern after intern would come into our office barely knowing how to speak or write a clear paragraph, decipher charts and graphs or put together a sales report. There are some basics that a solid high school education can teach you about these things, and work in itself will polish the skills as you learn the finer points of style your industry/organization dictates or demands.

But I tell you, so many college sophs and juniors were doing semester long internships and came without any basic skills. It's expected that there would be some time taken early on to learn the ropes, but they barely grasped some things. I had to show a sales intern how to prepare a quarterly report - OK, there was some special but not complicated software to use, but afterwards, fitting the stuff into the prepared template for reporting was hard for her, and she did not know what the report was saying. All she knew was that she was supposed to put some numbers somewhere and send it to me for review. Horrible grammar mistakes and incorrect reporting were all over, I could have just done it myself. I expected a bit more out of a 20 yr. old person who was going to college to get "educated."

I was doing that kind of work out of high school when I worked for a small insurance company inbetween semesters, and later on left school full-time to work in corporate America and let them pay my tuition (smart move, btw).

So I thought, how can I contribute to the betterment of the American people? Teach. But it's not so easy, I was coming from a world where real skills were valued and needed. I worked with some bright individuals, but the departments and schools as a whole seemed to be lost. Curricula were written without any apparent clear-cut goals or processes, and department meetings or professional development courses never left me feeling like I'd learned anything concrete I could take to the classroom and use. Lots of just talking about ideas, no suggestions for implementation. And always always always was the reminder to cater to special ed kids. Spinning wheels with no progress.

During a year-long PD project on "21st Century Learning" we were divided into inter-departmental groups and told to give our vision for the future of ed. One group built this big tower in rainbow colors with hands of every color wrapped around it reaching to the sky. Not kidding. They won the competition. THIS is the kind of touchy-feely stuff teachers are involved in during staff meetings.

I knew it was over for me when we had a speaker come in and urge us to read Thomas Friedman's The Earth Is Flat as our summer book to give us some food for thought as to how to raise American competitiveness in the global economy. I suggested we just go back to basics and teach grammar, writing, math, and how to read/write mildly technical reports and understand basic civics and economics instead of learning critical theory. I knew I was being let go anyway, so I had nothing to lose, but the looks I got said "you backwards racist philistine!"

Hate your teachers. They really, really aren't there to make you better, they are there to make you serve globalism and feel guilt over being American.

taterearl said...

Some of the best teachers I had were male...because they took the time to help us understand the material and ran the classroom like a leader.

The worst ones were the feminist teachers. I learned how to get into trouble for the most asinine things.

Anonymous said...

I have met many teachers through my work and through friends an family .... Those whom I asked said they went into teaching for ...
1. Summers off
2. Job security
3. Good retirement and benefit

Nothing about the kids ..... Most of whom are a bunch of spoiled brats anyway.

Anonymous said...

In my experience, most teachers go into education straight out of college. They had summers off in grade school, high school, college, and now in their careers. They have never known a life where you must work 260 days a year.

I do IT work in a public school district. Every September I have the exact same conversation with the teachers returning from Florida and Hawaii:

"Oh, welcome back, so good to see you, how was your summer, did you do anything fun?"

"Yes, I worked."

"Oh..."

Jane the Grad Student said...

Don't know how it is in other states, but here in VA, you can't really get a degree in "education" (perhaps of the "early childhood" or maybe elementary variety but nothing beyond that). If you want to teach a given subject, you MUST have a degree in that subject, and then a teaching certificate on top of that. For private schools, you don't need the teaching certificate, but you do need proficiency in your chosen field.

Also, here in the DC area of Northern VA, that "summers off" thing is not guaranteed. Cost of living is a little high in these parts. You either need to live like you were still in college so that you can sock away 1/4 of every check to cover the summer months when you DON'T get paid, or you find another job for summer. (If you're lucky. It's hard to bridge the gap with tutoring, and employers are not going to hire "real adults" for summer when they can pay teenagers $5 less per hour).

In partial payment for my tuition, I teach undergrad biology lab at a state university. It's great to see the looks on my students' faces when I tell them that my "semester break" was more like a 3-day weekend. Just because classes are officially out for the season does not give you a free pass to skip research for 3-4 weeks. Welcome to the real world...

Anonymous said...

While much of the linked article is true, at least where I teach, the teachers are better than the kids/parents deserve based on the disrespectful attitude of the parent(s)/kids and the pay (though not better than the taxpayers deserve).

There are a lot of really bad teachers, but painting with such a broad brush is probably not helpful.

Most of the problems with our education system are structural and based on the misguided application of an altruism.

...the point about "leadership" in the classroom. I'm also an officer in the national guard (prior enlisted), which means I've been a high school student that had good teachers and bad teachers, a junior enlisted guy that had good officers and bad officers... Teachers have no real authority of any kind that matters to the savages we are occasionally expected to baby sit - military officers do, and it makes 180 degrees of difference.

Hate the teachers that deserve to be hated, hate the system, vote to abolish public education, but recognize that educational "outcomes" are primarily dependent on the individual student's desire to learn.

Practice! Practice! Practice! said...

"the teachers are better than the kids/parents deserve based on the disrespectful attitude of the parent(s)/kids and the pay (though not better than the taxpayers deserve)."

Hello!

"educational "outcomes" are primarily dependent on the individual student's desire to learn."

Hence why in South Asia, despite bad teachers and little resources, respectful kids that are eager to learn do so enthusiastically and gratefully.

Its a tough "red pill" for American parents to swallow but most of your kids are not brilliant little special snowflakes who are "expressing their creative individualism" by "hating teachers".

They are just spoiled brats who think they know it all.

And if they hate their teachers so much they should just drop out and be home schooled. Even if both of their (most likely divorced) parents work full time, they can do online learning during the day (between video games and porn surfing of course) then mom and/or dad can school them hands on in the evening when they return from a long, hard day at work.

But we all know after a long hard day at work the last thing an American parent wants to do is teach. After all, blogging and porn demands their attention just as much as it demands their kids' attentions. And then of course you have single parent dating, right? Why yes, teach your kids to hate their parents but love their dad's girlfriend or mom's boyfriend!

(and we're still wondering why American society is in the shape its in?)


All this complaining about the "school system" and "teachers" makes me think that Americans are anti-intellectuals who expect their teachers to be baby sitters, therapists, counselors, head hunters, job finders, brilliant scholars, fantastic orators and of course most of all attention grabbing entertainers who can compete with video games and porn stars to keep kids interested - and win!

School is not meant to be all things to all students or all things to all students' parents.

It is what YOU make it.

And I'm sorry CC but encouraging kids to "hate" their teachers (or anyone)is not going to help them in the short or long term.

Negativity fosters negativity.







Practice! Practice! Practice! said...

" Why yes, teach your kids to hate their parents but love their dad's girlfriend or mom's boyfriend!"

Ooops! Should read, "Why yes, teach your kids to hate their TEACHERS but love their dad's girlfriend or mom's boyfriend!"