From each according to his need

[Dedman]

Interesting read. It may just work.

[Gooberman]

Until a student who would of had an A recieves a C for having to go potty during class. The lawysers come in, GG.

[Stryker]

Go for it! The lack of responsibility in many places today is appalling; I'm glad this guy is making a stand.

[Avder]

Several good philisophical points raised by that article.

[kufyit]

You pay for school. It's yours. I hate teachers that try to be mommy. If someone needs to piss, or go out into the hall to take a call, or even needs to miss class, that should be their issue, not the teacher's.

[Lothar]

Don't take it too seriously -- it reads a lot more like A Modest Proposal than a serious proposal. It's just meant to make you think -- as long as students think they're entitled to certain things, the academic system in this country will be screwed up.

Should we penalize kids for peeing or stepping out into the hall for a few minutes to answer a phone call from mom? Nah, that's silly. But I have seen students leave the room for a phone call and then come back and ask the teacher to wait a minute so they can catch up copying down notes from the board, and that sort of behavior needs to be discouraged.

One of the 4th grade teachers I worked with would always stop talking if one of her kids was chatting, playing with something, reading a book, or whatever. She'd just sit and look at them and say "I'll wait" (or, on occasion, "since what you're doing right now is obviously important, I'll wait for you to finish.") Having watched the students' behavior change over 2-3 months, it's clear this strategy has worked.

[Beowulf]

bing!

self righteous azzes like this is why so many people hate school.

teach the class, stfu, and move on. the responsible students will get a's, the stupid ones will not. Having to go to the bathroom does not make you any less of an "achiever." Total bs.

[Dedman]

Two commnets.

1. The aliens finally let Lothar go. Welcome back.

2. Beo, I think you missed the point.

[Foil]

Don't take it too seriously -- it reads a lot more like A Modest Proposal than a serious proposal. It's just meant to make you think...

Absolutely. It works well as a dialogue-generating concept (and it's started some good discussion in here), but there is no way it should be implemented in reality.

Why not? Because it makes no distinction between those students who actually do have various special needs or issues, and those who are just trying to take advantage of the system (which, as the author correctly points out, is much too lenient with absences/inattention/etc.).

In only a couple of years of teaching experience, believe me, I've seen my share of poor excuses by students, ranging from elaborate attempts to forge notes from parents/teachers to the apathetic "shrug". But I have also had (verifiable) situations where students had specific needs which I allowed the students to work around. In these situations, which involved everything from physical handicaps to family situations, I still held the students accountable for completing their work and demonstrating understanding of the material via exams. Now this caused me some extra work (custom exams for students taking early tests, etc.), but when the situation warranted it, I made exceptions.

I'm not advocating easy work-arounds for students, and in fact I agree with the article in the sense that we need to toughen our standards, but you cannot just make a blanket statement that "special needs will no longer be tolerated".

teach the class, stfu, and move on. the responsible students will get a's, the stupid ones will not.

Not quite profoundly stated, but there's some truth to that. Ideally, the only things that should factor into a student's grade are the quality of their work and their grasp of the material being learned. Of course, for various reasons, that's not the way it works, but that's the way it should be.

That's my three cents.

[roid]

my first highschool was often hard to distinguish from a university. self empowerment worked, i found it to be a really good school.

mind you, back then no-one had mobile phones.

students are entitled to certain things, like being treated as humans instead of numbers. this article seems to be encouraging teachers to professionalise themselves away from being normal empathetic humans dealing with kids.

---

"jordan?... jordan! what are you doing... why arn't you working."
hangon sir... ... ... i was injecting myself.

(some teachers at another school wanted me to surrender my syringes to them until i needed them, in which case they would give them back momentarily.
um... no?)

[Ford Prefect]

So this teacher would like all of his classes cleared of any student that is not 100% interested in learning that material from that teacher. No requirement on the part of the teacher to reach out and engage those students who may be unsure of their life path and work future. It is be all here or be gone.
Well that would certainly make his job easier wouldn't it?
We are discussing college/university courses here where after the first two years the student has chosen his/her major and should only be taking courses related to that major. However in the first two years there are normally required courses. Such as English 100 for all students including future Science majors. With the attitude of this teacher we would have to eliminate these course requirements. Not an new idea but I don't know if I fully agree with it. Fred Reed does. http://fredoneverything.net/FOE_Frame_Column.htm
How about you. Should college/university students take only courses relating to their future occupation like a trades/technical school so that teachers can teach only the committed?

[roid]

on a tertiary schooling perscpective i have no problem with people being in a class if they aren't keen to participate. it's class participation that makes the class move, but i wouldn't say that someone not participating "Drains" from the rest of the class. let those who want to get involved: get involved.

in a trade school i went to it wasn't seen as a problem to just sit there doing nothing. your final outcome was the only tangible thing (it was competence based).
i remember one guy i met there was just there to pass time, he was in the country for a professional golf tournament or something and had spare time to kill.

is there really a problem here at all? (is there a shortage of chairs or something?). as long as you're not disrupting the experience for the rest of the class, you should be able to waste your class away to your heart's content.

hangon... i thought this article was talking about highschool (approx schooling years 8-12).

[Ford Prefect]

If the article is about high school then there is something wrong with a teacher that is not willing to try to engage his/her students. Sure there are kids there that would rather be wasting their lives at the mall or smoking pot in someone's basement. That is the reality of dealing with a compulsory educational system. For the teacher to declare that it is not worth teaching those that show limited interest is an admission that they cannot teach. They are given the task of taking a room full of children and making students out of them. They won't succeed with all of them but that is the nature of the job they have accepted.

[Foil]

How about you. Should college/university students take only courses relating to their future occupation like a trades/technical school so that teachers can teach only the committed?

I have two problems with that:

1. "future occupation" pre-supposes that the students know what they are going to do. Some do, but many students (especially freshmen & sophomores) are undecided, and many more students end up changing majors. Myself, I thought I knew what I was going to do when I got to college; but by my senior year, I had changed majors twice.

2. (I think this is the more important of the two) Restricting a student's education to a particular subject area limits their ability to get a quality "big-picture" perspective, which may even affect their chosen field. My major in college and graduate school was Theoretical Mathematics, but since I went to an undergraduate school where they really emphasized the importance of a "rounded" education, I also took classes on unrelated subjects like Philosophy, Art History, Sociology, Kinesiology and Theology. Although those classes had nothing to do with my major, they were a positive experience for me personally. I discovered a love for Theology I didn't know I had, and my appreciation for Mathematics was even heightened by some connections I found to other subjects (e.g. logic in philosophy, the artwork of M.C. Escher).

Here's a good example: although it may not have any direct connection to biology, don't you think that it would best if every scientist working on cloning had done some study in morality/ethics?

[Lothar]

there is something wrong with a teacher that is not willing to try to engage his/her students.

But that's not what this teacher is talking about. (If this guy was really the sort of teacher you suppose, he wouldn't have bothered writing this article.)

This teacher is talking about most students feeling like they should be entitled to some special treatment for no reason whatsoever, and not knowing how to avoid disrupting class.

I've taught fourth graders, middle schoolers, college freshmen, and college seniors, and the pattern is all the same: students think they can come in and ask for a favor for some stupid reason, and if you turn them down, they get upset. "I didn't do my homework because I was watching TV. Can I turn it in 2 days late?" "no." "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!"

Most teachers don't want their classroom entirely cleared of students who aren't 100% interested. They just want students to take responsibility for their own actions, which is what this guy is suggesting in a tongue-in-cheek manner. The vast majority of my students (of all ages) have been completely clueless about how to behave in class so as to not disrupt anyone else's learning, and they think they're entitled to special treatment from me.

If you're going to have a phone in class, take responsibility to make sure it doesn't disrupt my classroom and your fellow students. If you're going to use the bathroom or get a drink and you're going to miss some of the lecture, take responsibility by getting the notes from a friend or meeting with me after class instead of expecting me to slow down the lecture so you can catch up. If you forgot to do the homework, don't go making up excuses to try to get me to be sympathetic and let you turn it in late -- do it early if you have to, and don't come to me asking for special permission unless you have a legitimate reason for not having it done. And on and on...

Again, remember that what this guy wrote was intentionally over the top. It's meant to generate dialogue, not to be seriously implemented.

[Foil]

Well said.

[Beowulf]

That goes without saying. Like I said, the responsible students who know their place and know what they need to do will do it, and the idiots don't get any special treatment. Stupid people deserve to fail.

[Ford Prefect]

If you're going to have a phone in class, take responsibility to make sure it doesn't disrupt my classroom and your fellow students. If you're going to use the bathroom or get a drink and you're going to miss some of the lecture, take responsibility by getting the notes from a friend or meeting with me after class instead of expecting me to slow down the lecture so you can catch up. If you forgot to do the homework, don't go making up excuses to try to get me to be sympathetic and let you turn it in late -- do it early if you have to, and don't come to me asking for special permission unless you have a legitimate reason for not having it done. And on and on...

That just seems like so much common sense that I cannot believe it is not the way things are done. In the public schools in my neigbourhood cell phones are not allowed in class at all and if you miss a day making it up is up to the teacher. I know from my childs experience that some teachers expect you to make it up yourself.

[Lothar]

It is common sense, which is why it's so annoying that we actually have to say something about it.

[roid]

That goes without saying. Like I said, the responsible students who know their place and know what they need to do will do it, and the idiots don't get any special treatment. Stupid people deserve to fail.

mneeeeeeeeeeeeeh, don't know if i completely agree beo.
some ppl are stupid but seem to be actively trying to beat the stupid outof themselves. if a student seems keen and REALISES there is a gun to her head, i'd cut her some slack. if she seems keen on crawling through broken glass to catch up - then power to her.

basically, if people are working extra hard to not let their handycap get in the way.

[Foil]

Like I said, the responsible students who know their place and know what they need to do will do it, and the idiots don't get any special treatment. Stupid people deserve to fail.

I agree with roid here. That statement is unnecessarily harsh, at least if taken at face value.

If by that statement you meant, "irresponsible people deserve to fail", it's still a bit harsh, but there's some truth to it. It seems the consensus of the teachers here is that it comes down to a student's effort and responsibility, rather than innate ability.

For example, in my most recent teaching experience, I had two students on opposite ends of the spectrum:

- One student had an amazing ability and grasp of the material, and could pass even my tougher exams with ease; at the beginning, he even helped teach some of his classmates. However, toward the middle of the year, he started skipping school, and when he actually showed up in class, he was very disruptive. Now in his case, there were some outside factors (he was getting involved in a local gang), but it was probably one of the most frustrating things I dealt with.

- On the other hand, I also had a student who basically struggled all year long with even some of the easiest concepts. At the beginning of the year, he almost gave up. But by the end of the year, he was trying incredibly hard, pushing himself beyond what he thought he could do. Now he still only managed a "D", but he considered it a personal victory, and so do I. I was incredibly proud of him.

[Ford Prefect]

What is a teacher's job?
Is it just to pump information into the willing or is it to try and bring as much education as possible to each student according to his ability to learn? The former is easy, any one can do it. The latter requires skill and dedication.

[KlubMarcus]

It may just work.

Excellent job posting a http://www.townhall.com/ article. My favorite columnist on there is Thomas Sowell.