Sunday, October 18, 2009
On the role of the teacher
This is not a conclusive analysis, but rather an introduction to some inquisitions which have been plaguing my brain for the last year or so. It comes also as a response to some observations made by some acquaintances, although this is not directly addressed to anyone, and I doubt that anyone but me will read it.
A teacher at an institution performs essentially two kinds of activities: teaching (during class hours, and possibly outside of them), and evaluating his or her students. A question that arises, pertinently or impertinently, is: who holds the power in this social intercourse? Upon a cursory analysis, one might see it as obvious that the teacher does. In some graduate courses, however, students are required to provide their assessment of their teachers. In undergraduate ones, or in elementary education, this is rarer or inexistent. Thus, it seems that the diploma bestows some power to students.
Let's take a specific angle. A class is something about which a student may privately have his own opinions ("it was good", "I did not like it"). Yet, how far can we sustain a categorization of it as a service performed by the teacher to his or her students? How conflicting would this categorization be to the essential hierarchy which places the teacher above the student? In a house or a corporation, it is not the servants or low-rank employees who give the orders.
So, perhaps the way things normally work is a little different, and classes signify something other than teachers passing knowledge to students. Perhaps, it is more like teachers laying out the conditions to which students will have to obey in order to receive a positive evaluation.
As long as there is an external academic control over what teachers teach, there is no problem in sight: both things amount to the same, i.e., the conditions for the positive evaluation of a student have a perfect correspondence with the acquisition of some knowledge or skill which have been prevalidated externally. However, everyone knows that said control is imperfect, which implies a certain degree of illegitimate use of power on the part of the teacher. This is often a silent operation, with no knowledge by the student that he or she is being manipulated or deceived into accepting something wrong or inappropriate. Sometimes, the teacher does not know it either.
I do not know how to pursue this analysis any further at the moment. I do not know even whether there is anything at all to be added to the above considerations. For what it is worth, however, and whatever bearing it may have on the previous theme, it is my personal view that a school, and a University especially, is the right place for the free exchange of ideas, and anyone who feels uncomfortable with that is in the wrong place to begin with.
A teacher at an institution performs essentially two kinds of activities: teaching (during class hours, and possibly outside of them), and evaluating his or her students. A question that arises, pertinently or impertinently, is: who holds the power in this social intercourse? Upon a cursory analysis, one might see it as obvious that the teacher does. In some graduate courses, however, students are required to provide their assessment of their teachers. In undergraduate ones, or in elementary education, this is rarer or inexistent. Thus, it seems that the diploma bestows some power to students.
Let's take a specific angle. A class is something about which a student may privately have his own opinions ("it was good", "I did not like it"). Yet, how far can we sustain a categorization of it as a service performed by the teacher to his or her students? How conflicting would this categorization be to the essential hierarchy which places the teacher above the student? In a house or a corporation, it is not the servants or low-rank employees who give the orders.
So, perhaps the way things normally work is a little different, and classes signify something other than teachers passing knowledge to students. Perhaps, it is more like teachers laying out the conditions to which students will have to obey in order to receive a positive evaluation.
As long as there is an external academic control over what teachers teach, there is no problem in sight: both things amount to the same, i.e., the conditions for the positive evaluation of a student have a perfect correspondence with the acquisition of some knowledge or skill which have been prevalidated externally. However, everyone knows that said control is imperfect, which implies a certain degree of illegitimate use of power on the part of the teacher. This is often a silent operation, with no knowledge by the student that he or she is being manipulated or deceived into accepting something wrong or inappropriate. Sometimes, the teacher does not know it either.
I do not know how to pursue this analysis any further at the moment. I do not know even whether there is anything at all to be added to the above considerations. For what it is worth, however, and whatever bearing it may have on the previous theme, it is my personal view that a school, and a University especially, is the right place for the free exchange of ideas, and anyone who feels uncomfortable with that is in the wrong place to begin with.
