Is Bullying Normal?

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Permalink Reply by Nora on May 12, 2008 at 5:26pm

out of order, at least it is now.
That was an interesting clip. It is true that a lot of countries take academics more seriously than the United States does. At the same time in many countries less than half of the population that is of high school age goes to high school, so the kids that do really want to be there. In India they have a very strict cast system as well, so if someone from a very low class goes to Britain or the U.S and gets a PhD, then goes back to India, they can still not even look a janitor of a higher class in the eye.
There are skills that you learn outside of school that are also important, so I don't think that it should get to the point where kids cannot do anything but school. If it did get to that point we would have a much higher drop out rate.

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Permalink Reply by Annie Wood on May 16, 2008 at 10:25pm

I agree with Nora here...I had a health class this year with a teacher who was funny and entertaining, and so was the class. It was a joke to the students because she'd give us worksheets and say things like, "I know this is annoying, but you have to do it just because..." or "I know this sucks, but you have to do it anyway." ORRR this is my favorite: She told us when we were learning about different medical careers that it doesn't really matter to us unless we want to become a doctor...and she told us she wished she'd been an anesthesiologist because "they make a bunch of money". How's that for motivation? If a teacher gives you that, why should you try? Honestly? No. I think motivation is so important.

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Permalink Reply by Brett on May 22, 2008 at 11:25pm

I think a lot of teachers want students to do well but go about things the wrong way, which isn't always their fault. Going back to Mr. Atherton's "push" and "pull" Theory I can see a lot of pull here. The class has a lot of reasoning behind the purpose of learning about medical careers and those types of things, I find it frustrating when your teacher tells you that is not important.

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Permalink Reply by Nora on June 5, 2008 at 7:02pm

I agree that teachers should try to motivate the students and not tell them that what they are learning is worthless. At the same time, the curriculum is so strict now with all of the testing that it is probably not so fun for the teachers either. In a lot of subjects there is not much room for creativity, which means that they end up teaching the same things over and over.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Atherton on June 5, 2008 at 7:44pm

Wow! I have a very different perspective. First, why would any teacher waste their time teaching anything that's worthless? For the money? For the job security?

Second, of course teachers teach the same things over and over again. That's why we have teachers and schools. :-) Each new cohort has to learn the things that society believes to be important (those things may change a little, but not that much from one year to another).

I believe that the creativity of teaching involves insuring that students learn the most they can and there's always room for greater creativity in that task. Heck, I think there's a tremendous amount of creativity involved in classroom management alone. Given that what works for one student on one day, may not work on another and what works for one class on any one day, may not work on a different day. I think that teaching is endlessly challenging.

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Permalink Reply by Nora on June 16, 2008 at 3:50pm

I did not say that what teachers teach is worthless. Obviously it's not, but it is very structured and does not leave a lot of wiggle room.

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