Not all teachers are equal, and not all students desire to learn. From ancient times the relationship between teacher and student was considered to be an important one. If the time spent at school is taken into account, a student may spend more than half of his or her waking hours at the school. Up to a third of that time is in a direct interactive way with the student?s teacher or teachers. In all of history one name comes to mind when contemplating the greatest of teachers.
Aristotle lived from 384 BC to 322 BC and he was a Greek philosopher as well as a polymath. He was a student of Plato and the teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings covered many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Plato was the teacher of Socrates, and without Plato, Aristotle would not have become one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy today. If Plato was a bad teacher or if Aristotle had been a bad student, then history would be very different from what it is today. Think of what this would have meant to Alexander the Great as a student of a bad student of a poor teacher! Would Alexander have been so great?
Aristotle?s views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance period, although they were ultimately replaced by Newtonian physics. In the zoological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate just at the beginning of the 19th century. So it stands to reason that had Aristotle become a bad student, not only would Alexander not have been quite so great, perhaps there never would have been a ?Sir Isaac Newton?! Aristotle?s works contain the earliest known records of the formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into ?modern formal logic?. If Aristotle and Plato had lived in a system of education such as the current educational model in use today, many of the benefits of education might not have come into existence, and things would be much worse. In this way the educational models must be constructed to consider the future potential of the great minds to come.
Not every teacher knows how to teach every student. It is the student?s job to show up on time for class and attempt to learn through the graduated conditioning that they have been instructed to learn under from Kindergarten to grade 12. If a student hasn?t learned how to properly learn by the time they reach college, the system has most likely failed them in some way. Teachers as well as students are currently swimming upstream against a system of education that is corroding at the edges. The river bank of scholastic achievement is crumbling and the waters of higher learning are muddily producing less than exceptional product. In the fray of the battle to save the ?good students?, faculties and departments are blaming the systematic problems upon the bad students and even teachers who are not holding their end up. At the end of the day however, no matter how many others are blamed it will be said that there is just another student ?who couldn?t be reached? by all those educated fellows and ladies, who get paid to teach things to people.
In today?s world every aspect of life is measured, assessed, and given a rating of some kind. Is it any wonder that the profession of teaching and in a more general sense, education, be treated the same way and evaluated? Students are looked upon by society as ?someone?s children? teachers are sometimes demonized as if the weight of the educational issues rests solely upon their shoulders. It does not. There have been many students throughout history who is some sense have had bad experiences ?in school?. It becomes too easy to blame teachers alone for this problem, governing bodies within these institutions should ask the rudimentary question, ?who hired them?, it?s not quite so easy an issue to blame Plato for any of Aristotle?s learning disabilities. It is also not a solution to blame the student for not being interested in their lessons either.
There are indeed bad students! It wouldn?t take any long tedious study to prove that. Not taking into consideration those students with learning disabilities, who need to be taught by teachers trained specially to deal with such disabilities, then it can only be said that there are students who truly do not wish to be in the education system at all. If asked and heard by faculty staff and parents alike, it is certain that a large portion of these ?bad students? would be realized to be disinterested in the courses and perhaps even with school altogether. Forcing and manipulating a child to learn against their will, when they really want to be rock stars and actors, makes them ?bad students?, and no amount of ?good teachers? or proper method is going to sway the mind of a resistant ?student?.
Then it must considered that the system is the main culprit to producing so many ?bad students? and teachers, and in essence it has not screened hard enough to find those students who truly want to be there, and learn. How can a college or University produce so many unproductive members within its walls when they hire only the best staff with the finest credentials? It is simple, the reason the system is failing its students is primarily due to greed. The majority of students in college and University do want to be there, but there is a percentage of the student body that is of a privileged class who have the money and the means to be there, not, however the desire. Instead of taking on a full time job in the parents firm, they choose to spend their days on campus. The Universities and colleges are riddled with students who desire something, but are not quite sure just exactly what that something is. They lack direction and focus. As a rule most educational facilities do not turn down students with money in their pockets or daddy?s and mommies who are willing to bankroll their child, until their child ?finds a direction in school?, indefinitely if necessary. It is true that the students have to have minimal grades to get into the programs and this leads to the next problem in the system, faculty funneling practices.
If a student doesn?t have good enough marks to get accepted into the top faculties such as, engineering science medicine or law, then they gradually spiral towards the lower faculties. The universities and colleges rate faculties by dollars input into the system by ?sponsors? If the top faculties of a learning institution didn?t get the sponsor money from the outside sources that they did, they would lose their rating with the university or college, and another faculty would be bumped up in terms of underlying monetary importance to the institution.
Since the top four faculties of Science, Medicine, Engineering and Law are seemingly cemented by the requirements of the world to have good doctors and lawyers, and the fact that civilization needs its buildings and space programs to stay intact and vital, then it must accepted that money ?drives everything?, especially education!
As the ?bad student? drift through their extended education, the fall from faculty to faculty, descending ever lower, until they end up at the bottom of the educational system, and find themselves becoming teachers with an minor arts degree. This was not the way I am certain, that Aristotle or Plato would have imagined the future of education to end up. Education used to be the highest of the faculties, and commanded the respect of all the others. It is unfortunate to realize that the teachers, the ones who are responsible for all those young bright minds, are operating from a system that permits anyone of the numerous dropouts from the other departments to join their ranks in education. It is no wonder that there are so many ?bad students? today.
Source: http://toddsblogs.com/referenceandeducation/2012/09/22/the-good-teacher/
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