map_of_the_world (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
map_of_the_world) wrote2010-06-29 01:29 pm
map_of_the_world) wrote2010-06-29 01:29 pm
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Periodically i have a conversation with someone that goes like this:
them so have you ever thought about teaching?
me ha! no I'd rather shoot myself
Them Why?
Me because the education system sucks beyond reckoning
them its not that bad, it could do with more money...
Me No I mean its inherently flawed, taking thirty kids to one adult and teaching them a very narrow range of things that "matter" is ridiculous and damaging
Them It works for most of them
Me no it doesnt, lots of them fall through, and even the ones it does work for dont actually find out what they are good at, what if someone is really unacademic but really good at something that isn't seen as particularly important, like music, or cooking, or building? the education system should give space for people to find and develop their potential not squash it
Them That will never happen
Me WHICH IS WHY I DON'T WANT TO BE A TEACHER!
Good grief, also there's always an underlying assumption in this line of questioning that what I'm doing is less important than teaching, that just because I'm not a "Teacher" means that I don't teach, and I just want to scream at them sometimes that I have spent most of my professional life rescuing and supporting kids that their oh so precious education system has failed and abandoned
This is not a rant against teachers I think teaching is a valuable, hard, thankless job, its a rant against the education system and the people who think what I do isn't as important as formal teaching.
me ha! no I'd rather shoot myself
Them Why?
Me because the education system sucks beyond reckoning
them its not that bad, it could do with more money...
Me No I mean its inherently flawed, taking thirty kids to one adult and teaching them a very narrow range of things that "matter" is ridiculous and damaging
Them It works for most of them
Me no it doesnt, lots of them fall through, and even the ones it does work for dont actually find out what they are good at, what if someone is really unacademic but really good at something that isn't seen as particularly important, like music, or cooking, or building? the education system should give space for people to find and develop their potential not squash it
Them That will never happen
Me WHICH IS WHY I DON'T WANT TO BE A TEACHER!
Good grief, also there's always an underlying assumption in this line of questioning that what I'm doing is less important than teaching, that just because I'm not a "Teacher" means that I don't teach, and I just want to scream at them sometimes that I have spent most of my professional life rescuing and supporting kids that their oh so precious education system has failed and abandoned
This is not a rant against teachers I think teaching is a valuable, hard, thankless job, its a rant against the education system and the people who think what I do isn't as important as formal teaching.
no subject
You are very brave to be able to work in an environment like that, doing the work you do.
My mum was before retirement, a high school teacher. And she would never dream of considering someone who works with the kids who falls through the cracks to be less than a teacher. She always seemed so grateful that some of those kids she couldn't help herself were helped by someone else.
Nowadays she is teaching literacy for adults who feel through the cracks and never learnt to read or write. The stories she hears are so terrible. But so rewarding for her to see them open up a bit and learn a bit of something almost everyone takes for granted.