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Teaching shouldn’t be a mattress for your ego and respect isn’t a one way street. You were both unnecessarily short and rude to me today and I didn’t appreciate it. Talk to me like a fricking adult with fulling functional hearing next time. —Silks Play
This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2015.
13 Comments
Pay attention; then no one will have to speak to you about your behaviour.
“You were both unnecessarily short “
Hey, they can’t help it if they aren’t very tall. It’s in their genes.
Would that be a soft or firm mattress?
THE GOOD TEACHER
“Teaching shouldn’t be a mattress for your ego and respect isn’t a one-way street.”
This is an excellent bitch. For some, teaching can easily become an ego trip – “the sage on the stage” – for those who lack philosophical insight into the activity while, correspondingly, one of the principal characteristics for those for whom teaching is an ego trip is their lack of respect for their students. The two characteristics are mutually reinforcing. So what is the solution?
Teaching is an intensely personal activity and for many of those for whom teaching is an ego trip there is no solution. They lack the fundamental but necessary characteristic of humility whereby the teacher engages with the student as an equal, perhaps not in knowledge narrowly conceived but rather as equals-in-dialogue with each other. If discovered, the disrespectful ego trippers should be barred from the profession. But the issue goes beyond that of the attributes of character to those connected to the attributes of mind. But what are these attributes?
It means that humility is not a sufficient condition for the good teacher. What is required are intellectual qualities or qualities of mind which relate to coherent meaning-making, qualities which demand reasons for one’s assertions. (I’m talking now about upper secondary, not elementary school. The two are completely distinct in terms of the activity of teaching.) If the intellectual qualities of teaching can be reduced to one word, that word would be “interpretation.” For the good teacher everything is subject to interpretation (I’m talking about History here) which involves understanding where the author is coming from. There is no interpretation-free History – even texts are selections of “facts” which then themselves become the grist for the activity of interpretation. This is not to say that everything is relative to the mind of the interpreter, that there is no truth in teaching History although it is to say that there is no objective truth in the sense of the brute scientific fact relating to the observation of matter-in-motion.
Well there we are. It’s a start.
Cheerio!
Insert random comment here that doesn’t even relate to the OB.
Seriously, the posters here used to be so great. What the hell happened?
OB, why were they rude to you? Some people are just assholes but if both were rude then maybe you did do something wrong? Or maybe not. It’s hard to know with such few details.
What the hell happened? Clearly, they tried but failed to follow your shining example. Perhaps you would like to start the process of recovery. Or maybe not.
The original 7th comment, which I read, was deleted. I was about to offer my suggestions but took a moment to thank Vicki over on “Sheet Harbour” for her support. Anyway, my suggestions are contained in “A Change of Strategy” and can be found on “An ode to assholes” at 07/21, 9:43 AM. Good luck!
Two childish snotty bitches who thought they were ‘better than’.
OB you were likely spoken to the way you needed to be spoken to. Put on your adult pants and shake your head, when you’re done sulking feel free to join the rest of us in the real world. Some people ARE better than others. Forget the neo-liberal third wave feminist garbage that gets pushed down your throat on a daily basis by mediums like this one. You are NOT a victim, you are NOT entitled to have things handed to you, you ARE responsible for your own behaviour and will be treated accordingly. Some people never learn.
Ya know what? Nobody can be perfect at all times. Everyone has an off-moment or truly terrible day from time to time. I am sure you are not perfectly nice to all people at your workplace every second of every day.
So a teacher was “short” with you? Well, it happens. I presume you are not in kindergarten so you should hardly consider this to be a major trauma in your educational career.
Once you pass a certain age, teachers are no longer obligated to sugar-coat every single interaction, or always speak in a sweet singy-songy voice.
It’s not the purpose of adult education to offer unlimited praise or flattery of your tastes, or to love you just for being you.
Adult students are expected to be able to cope with normal adult interactions, even when those interactions might be less than perfectly pleasant.
Oh poor baby. What are you going to do when you hit the real world when bosses, clients and random people start yelling at you (some for reason, others no reason other than they don’t like it. Suck it up Buttercup.
“Teaching is an intensely personal activity and for many of those for whom teaching is an ego trip there is no solution. They lack the fundamental but necessary characteristic of humility whereby the teacher engages with the student as an equal, perhaps not in knowledge narrowly conceived but rather as equals-in-dialogue with each other. If discovered, the disrespectful ego trippers should be barred from the profession.”
Listen to this wanker!!! LOLOLOL
Doctors also lack the fundamental but necessary characteristic of humility needed to help patients they feel are not their equal.