Do Teachers Really Know Best?

Teachers have been maligned, derided, put on a pedestal, ignored, followed, awarded, lionized, and sued by parents. Administrators choose their favorite teachers as educators of the year, star teachers, or outstanding faculty, lavishing praise and accolades on those they deem the best team players.

The unprepared teachers or those who cause embarrassment to the school district through their unscrupulous and immoral behavior are usually quietly transferred elsewhere with excellent recommendations unless there is a teacher’s union that prevents dismissal of such specimens of the teaching profession.

Do teachers really know best? Etymologically speaking, they “show, point out, guide, give instruction” to their charges but some of them go beyond their call of duty for better or for worse. Teachers are able to instruct to the extent of their level of education, actual comprehension and knowledge of the subject matter, and their level and type of ideological programming. As a student I’ve had some fantastic professors and some atrocious indoctrinators.

A teacher has the opportunity eight hours a day to mold a child’s mind, the proverbial brain “full of mush,” independently of their parents’ wishes. They have your child’s rapt attention. Young pupils believe their teachers to be the ultimate authority on everything and are never wrong.

People Magazine awarded their 2013 Teacher of the Year to eight teachers who work in challenging environments such as “underfunded schools, students with difficult home lives, andlanguage barriers.” The media and the public in general believe that throwing more money at education will resolve fundamental flaws.

Named “The supportive survivor,” Valencia Robinson from New Smyrna Beach Middle School in Florida is a yoga devotee. “I will not let my students eat junk food in my class.” Aside from the fact that students should not eat in class and eating healthy is a good idea, it is the parents’ role to choose their children’s diet; they have not abdicated that role once their children step into the classroom.

Via: Canada Free Press

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