4 ms·

Somebody once said, "Bad teachers prepare kids for bad bosses, which they are likely to encounter." While I agree with that to some extent based on actual exper

by tabtab 8y ago

Somebody once said, "Bad teachers prepare kids for bad bosses, which they are likely to encounter." While I agree with that to some extent based on actual experience, taken too far it can hamper education. If you flunk math or English because of a bad teacher, it can set your entire education behind schedule. Perhaps make sure the difficult teachers are not in key subjects that have course path dependencies. Similar for books. (You will encounter poorly-written instructions in the work-place, which difficult books prepare you for.)

mikekchar 8y ago
Random anecdote. I once had a terrible English teacher. I was transferred into the class midstream (for unrelated reasons). After my first class I went to my new teacher and said, "I really love writing. In the previous class the teacher was planning on having a creative writing section. Will we have one in this class?" At which point the English teacher replied, "Writing has nothing to do with English and only one teacher in this school thinks otherwise". I was a bit disheartened, but as English was my favourite class, I decided to just enjoy the other aspects of the class. We had a midterm exam for which half of the grade was an essay question on a novel we had been reading. I admit that I wanted to impress my teacher, so I read the book over and over again, practically memorising it. When I wrote my essay, I was able to quote passages of it. I was reasonably proud of my effort. Imagine my shock when my paper was returned and I received a 0 for the essay! The only comment on the paper was "Terrible". In tears, I went to my teacher and asked, "What's wrong with the essay? I studied really hard and even added a lot of quotes". The teacher seemed surprised. "Oh. You actually care about this. Well, your essay was badly written. The quotes were nice, but everything else was terrible. I couldn't give you any marks". Very frustrated, I went back to my parents and complained. They read my paper and to their credit they said, "Well, I wouldn't have given this a zero, but it could use some improvement". Then they taught me how to write. I spent the next 3-4 months writing essays every day because I was so frustrated. Fast forward a few decades and I still love writing, thanks to my parents. I have mixed feelings about that teacher. Truly, she was messed up in serious ways. She tended to give high marks to cute boys that she tried to chat up after class. She would also randomly form some kind of hatred for individual students and would do her best to crush them under her heel. However, she was the first teacher who ever told me that my writing sucked. All my other teachers were so focused on my enthusiasm that they forgot to give me criticism. Without my terrible teacher, my parents wouldn't have intervened and I think I never would have learned to write. It's a weird world.
- ineedasername 8y ago
  I read the whole comment, but got stuck on the fact that the teacher said writing had nothing to do with English, but then gave an exam where half the grade was writing an essay. Weird.
  - mikekchar 8y ago
    Yeah. It was super weird. Over the years, my guess is that the rest of the department made her do a lot of stuff she didn't want to do. If particular students (like me) worked hard on those things, she punished them as a kind of retribution. I never could figure out what she thought English was about, though. She was super keen on reading literature and it was mandatory to fawn over famous writers. I couldn't figure out where she thought these books came from and how famous writers became famous. As I said, completely messed up. I transferred to a different school at the end of the year (my family was moving around), but I heard she had a nervous breakdown and retired from teaching, which is probably an incredibly good thing.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  There's an interesting anecdote in the chess world. Mikhail Botvinnik [1] was a longtime former world champion and would go on to become the 'patriarch' of Soviet chess, which would dominate the world scene in chess for many decades. In the early 60s a child was invited to Botvinnik's school for an assessment and possible training. Upon evaluating the child and his games and 'feel' for chess, Botvinnik remarked, "This boy has no clue about chess, and there's no future for him in this profession." The boy he was talking about was Anatoly Karpov [2]. Karpov would go on to become world champion once Bobby Fischer failed to defend his title. But far from winning by default he took the title and held onto it for many years becoming one of the most dominant and active world champions of all time. He ceded his title only once once Garry Kasparov came onto the scene. And really I think these sort of anecdotes are rife among many who go onto achieve great things. One of the many reasons I think the current trends in school of trying to encourage and reward children, particularly taken to the extreme with things such as participation trophies, are likely deeply misguided and being driven by intuition rather than data in an area where the latter often contradicts the former. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Botvinnik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Botvinnik [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Karpov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Karpov
vesak 8y ago
But what you need to do to bad bosses is fire them, or leave them. That's hardly what a school teaches you to do in case you end up with a bad teacher.
- tabtab 8y ago
  Not always easy during an economic slump.

by tabtab 8y ago

mikekchar 8y ago

Random anecdote. I once had a terrible English teacher. I was transferred into the class midstream (for unrelated reasons). After my first class I went to my new teacher and said, "I really love writing. In the previous class the teacher was planning on having a creative writing section. Will we have one in this class?" At which point the English teacher replied, "Writing has nothing to do with English and only one teacher in this school thinks otherwise". I was a bit disheartened, but as English was my favourite class, I decided to just enjoy the other aspects of the class. We had a midterm exam for which half of the grade was an essay question on a novel we had been reading. I admit that I wanted to impress my teacher, so I read the book over and over again, practically memorising it. When I wrote my essay, I was able to quote passages of it. I was reasonably proud of my effort. Imagine my shock when my paper was returned and I received a 0 for the essay! The only comment on the paper was "Terrible". In tears, I went to my teacher and asked, "What's wrong with the essay? I studied really hard and even added a lot of quotes". The teacher seemed surprised. "Oh. You actually care about this. Well, your essay was badly written. The quotes were nice, but everything else was terrible. I couldn't give you any marks". Very frustrated, I went back to my parents and complained. They read my paper and to their credit they said, "Well, I wouldn't have given this a zero, but it could use some improvement". Then they taught me how to write. I spent the next 3-4 months writing essays every day because I was so frustrated. Fast forward a few decades and I still love writing, thanks to my parents. I have mixed feelings about that teacher. Truly, she was messed up in serious ways. She tended to give high marks to cute boys that she tried to chat up after class. She would also randomly form some kind of hatred for individual students and would do her best to crush them under her heel. However, she was the first teacher who ever told me that my writing sucked. All my other teachers were so focused on my enthusiasm that they forgot to give me criticism. Without my terrible teacher, my parents wouldn't have intervened and I think I never would have learned to write. It's a weird world.

ineedasername 8y ago
I read the whole comment, but got stuck on the fact that the teacher said writing had nothing to do with English, but then gave an exam where half the grade was writing an essay. Weird.
- mikekchar 8y ago
  Yeah. It was super weird. Over the years, my guess is that the rest of the department made her do a lot of stuff she didn't want to do. If particular students (like me) worked hard on those things, she punished them as a kind of retribution. I never could figure out what she thought English was about, though. She was super keen on reading literature and it was mandatory to fawn over famous writers. I couldn't figure out where she thought these books came from and how famous writers became famous. As I said, completely messed up. I transferred to a different school at the end of the year (my family was moving around), but I heard she had a nervous breakdown and retired from teaching, which is probably an incredibly good thing.
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
There's an interesting anecdote in the chess world. Mikhail Botvinnik [1] was a longtime former world champion and would go on to become the 'patriarch' of Soviet chess, which would dominate the world scene in chess for many decades. In the early 60s a child was invited to Botvinnik's school for an assessment and possible training. Upon evaluating the child and his games and 'feel' for chess, Botvinnik remarked, "This boy has no clue about chess, and there's no future for him in this profession." The boy he was talking about was Anatoly Karpov [2]. Karpov would go on to become world champion once Bobby Fischer failed to defend his title. But far from winning by default he took the title and held onto it for many years becoming one of the most dominant and active world champions of all time. He ceded his title only once once Garry Kasparov came onto the scene. And really I think these sort of anecdotes are rife among many who go onto achieve great things. One of the many reasons I think the current trends in school of trying to encourage and reward children, particularly taken to the extreme with things such as participation trophies, are likely deeply misguided and being driven by intuition rather than data in an area where the latter often contradicts the former. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Botvinnik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Botvinnik [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Karpov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Karpov

vesak 8y ago

But what you need to do to bad bosses is fire them, or leave them. That's hardly what a school teaches you to do in case you end up with a bad teacher.

tabtab 8y ago
Not always easy during an economic slump.