Different types of teachers exist just as there are many categories of students. As such, it is no surprise to see an assortment of articles either condemning or praising both teachers and students in various media.
In other blog posts, I have mentioned that the very reason why I retired from the teaching profession is because of the deplorable standards of education, especially in the 21st century.
Being an arty farty type of person, I am also an idealistic character, often times a dreamer with lofty hopes for the world :-), preferring to enjoy intrinsic rather than extrinsic values of work. Thus, I gave up my teaching profession, preferring to remember the best moments of my career rather than suffering the nonsense from students who are not interested in the learning process. Of course, I enjoy the liberty of doing this because I live a simple lifestyle, seldom go shopping, do not follow and am not interested in fashion trends and I do not use cosmetics except for those I have received as presents. When I do shop, the main aim would be to expand my collection of books. To that end, my hubby always says that I am a low maintenance wife :-).
I find that as the years go by, (I am making a generalization based on my personal teaching experience of over twenty years in different institutions) the following prevalent trends are most worrying:
* Students are less likely to display critical thinking skills
* Rote learning has limited their creative thinking abilities
* The desire to inquire and to test the validity of syllabus content is virtually absent as many aim to regurgitate information in a prescribed template as dictated by model answers or workbooks which are being churned out nineteen to the dozen by various publishing houses.
* The love for reading is hardly ever present.
* Few would bother to do research in a topic that is being taught.
* If they could get away with scoring the highest marks with minimal input, they would.
* The ability to form sound and reasoned judgement is a monumental task, especially for lazy economics students who cannot be bothered to even remember the factors of production and fundamental concepts of the syllabus.
* Learning is carried out with an unhealthy emphasis on quantitative achievement, and not for learning per se, to develop minds or to enrich their personal lives with the knowledge that has been acquired.
* Many are so lacking in general knowledge that one begins to wonder if they even know anything about current events.
* Self discipline is a major problem and so written work is rare and the quality is quite depressing.
* Far too often, procrastination has seriously undermined the quality of work and the development of their skills and understanding.
* Some can spend hours on end in on-line chats or computer games but only ten to thirty minutes in a task which needs perhaps two hours of serious contemplation.
* Most display a weak mastery of the language and are unable to express themselves, let alone understand what is in the textbook or reference book, particularly if they abhor reading.
* There is an unhealthy over dependence on tuition classes that I wonder why the parents did not opt for home schooling instead of burdening their children with the demands of attending school and tuition classes. I know a fifth former who has ELEVEN tuition classes and she is very thin due to lack of sleep and rest as she tries, to the best of her ability, to finish work given in all her classes. Fact is, self-starters who do not depend on tuition classes are more likely to be high achievers who display sharp thinking skills and confidence.
* Many are reluctant to think and to analyze when doing objective questions and expect to be spoon fed the answer, without bothering to decipher the true meaning of the question, the intent of the examiner and the syllabus content being tested. As such, they would fare poorly in such areas.
* The ability to form opinions is truly lacking as many rely on secondary information.
* The appalling practice of plagiarism has bloomed with the advent of Internet and many have no qualms about submitting a cut and paste job without attributing to sources of information.
* When writing, many move at a snail's pace and would rather refer to model answers than to use their God-given abilities to produce a well-reasoned piece of work.
* Few students display initiative, expecting instead to be told what to do or what to read every step of the way, in short, they want to and expect to be spoon-fed.
* Do not forget the role of the parents in molding their children either positively or negatively. And why do I say that? Some have unrealistic expectations for their children and impose ridiculous demands on both the child and the teacher. Others live in denial and refuse to accept constructive criticisms of their child while some are inconsistent in the way they relate to their children or teachers. Few allow the children to grow naturally and many want their kids to live out the dreams they had for themselves.
* Many students are most unwilling to exert themselves intellectually and this intellectual inertia is a serious problem because it has far and long lasting effects.
* Many students study for material rewards. Years ago, I had a student who told me that he would be given 30 000RM if he scored straight A's for the PMR. My response - would your parents like to adopt me? I don't mind studying for the PMR again :-) and he responded by telling me that his younger brother will be given 10 000RM if he scored straight A's for the UPSR examination. *faint* Then there were others who were promised 1000RM per distinction and another one who was promised 10 000RM per distinction for PMR. Yup. Such people exist. Did they survive my class? LOL!!! MOST DEFINITELY A RESOUNDING NO !!! Few are ready to work, I mean really work to be on the path to excellence, opting for immediate gratification and not deferred gratification. Very tragic!
* Generally, the commitment to excellence is not there in many students. For example, I have told many in the past to review their work many times to iron out basic problems such as:
- Subject-Verb Agreement errors
- Misuse of Infinitives
- Malapropism
- Misplaced Modifiers
-Split infinitives
- Tautology, Redundancy and Fallacies
-Ending a sentence with a preposition
- Run-on sentences, incomplete sentences etc
- Major spelling errors plus commonly misspelled words
etc etc etc The list is endless! Yet, despite countless reminders, they still turned in sub-standard work.
I am so sorry to sound like a prophetess of doom but that is the sad state of affairs. I do not intend to offend any student and if you do not display the above-mentioned malaise, I am truly happy for you. If you do, then it is certainly time to change.
The bottom-line is this : Few have pride in their work, choosing to finish the task in the shortest possible time with minimal effort to get the license to play or do what their hearts desire.
For me, teaching was really most fulfilling from 1987 to 2005. Thereafter, my experience has been an endless nightmare, with the exception of Hobart, Eugene, Jackson, Michelle, the Ang triplets, Shear Min, Franco and Kevin. As such, instead of teaching, I now spend my time blogging. I do not earn any money from blogging and have to incur expenses but the rewards I derive are limitless and remain. Had I continued, with my kind of commitment and expectation and the current trends, I would have died from disappointment or from cardiac arrest.
Quite a number of colleges used to call me up to invite me to join their faculty but I declined their offers most politely and humbly. I shudder to think of the situation now. In my last Sociology course for a Diploma Course at a local college, I nearly fainted when the students did their ppt presentations and submitted their term papers. If you are a young student, please work hard - not just for yourself or your parents, but also for your motherland. I pray the next generation of young voters will be able to make sound decisions about their voting preferences.
However, through blogging, I have met some very bright students/young people who display excellent language abilities, thinking skills and I comfort myself because there is still hope...These bright young people include Mei San, Nerdcore Fishfoot, B. Y. (who actually emailed her request and a write-up about herself, background and experience to ask me to coach her!!! Bless this lovely lass!) and Jonathan Ong.
Do you want to know the truth about how I feel with regards to education standards?
*sigh*
Sometimes, words are unnecessary.
Standards are moving anti-gravitationally all over the world, not just in the home ground. In 2002, I was an overseas examiner for an international examining board and I have marked scripts from Kenya, Tanzania, Bangladesh, Myanmar and a few other developing countries. It was a tedious and arduous task (and I passed on the opportunity to another friend) but I was greatly surprised because students from those countries displayed a better command of the language, a more analytical approach to the given tasks and a deeper understanding of the syllabus content than those I had taught in my courses. The shock made me think of what might befall us in future. Guess what? My deepest fears were not unfounded.
Even standards for international examination boards are sliding. For example, the IGCSE Economics Exam used to have five options for the forty objective questions to be answered in one hour (extended level and core level). Then in the early 1990's, this was changed to four options for forty questions for both levels. This coming May 2009 will be the FIRST time that students only need to answer THIRTY questions (four options) in ONE HOUR. Obviously, it means that the candidates will be given more time to analyze and to make their responses.
Get my drift?
Take a look at Bloom's Toxonomy. One can see that many students are only at Level 3, or if they are lucky, Level 4.
In 1956, Benjamin Bloom headed a group of educational psychologists who developed a classification of levels of intellectual behavior important in learning. Bloom found that over 95 % of the test questions students encounter require them to think only at the lowest possible level...the recall of information.
Bloom identified six levels within the cognitive domain, from the simple recall or recognition of facts, as the lowest level, through increasingly more complex and abstract mental levels, to the highest order which is classified as evaluation. Verb examples that represent intellectual activity on each level are listed here.
In recent years, the terms have been redefined as follows:
1. Knowledge: arrange, define, duplicate, label, list, memorize, name, order, recognize, relate, recall, repeat, reproduce state.
2. Comprehension: classify, describe, discuss, explain, express, identify, indicate, locate, recognize, report, restate, review, select, translate,
3. Application: apply, choose, demonstrate, dramatize, employ, illustrate, interpret, operate, practice, schedule, sketch, solve, use, write.
4. Analysis: analyze, appraise, calculate, categorize, compare, contrast, criticize, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test.
5. Synthesis: arrange, assemble, collect, compose, construct, create, design, develop, formulate, manage, organize, plan, prepare, propose, set up, write.
6. Evaluation: appraise, argue, assess, attach, choose compare, defend estimate, judge, predict, rate, core, select, support, value, evaluate.
* Remembering: Retrieving, recognizing, and recalling relevant knowledge from long-term memory.Now, in my retirement, although I am deficient in income, I am rich in memories of yester-years when students really had grey matter and knew how to use it. I know I was greatly blessed with the opportunity to teach many great minds, majority of whom have ended up with at least one post-graduate degree and a sizeable number who are pursuing/or intend to pursue their doctorates. I have oft thought about writing a book about my experiences and to inject humor into those scenarios and I will reserve that for another blog post because this is already such a long post.
* Understanding: Constructing meaning from oral, written, and graphic messages through interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, and explaining.
* Applying: Carrying out or using a procedure through executing, or implementing.
* Analyzing: Breaking material into constituent parts, determining how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose through differentiating, organizing, and attributing.
* Evaluating: Making judgments based on criteria and standards through checking and critiquing.
* Creating: Putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure through generating, planning, or producing.
Frankly, I could go on and on about the pathetic state of affairs but I will conclude on a positive note.
If you are a parent, please do not burden your child with tuition classes. Do not spoil your child. Emphasize a well-rounded development of your child that includes a five-pronged approach:
* spiritual development
* social development (the child must have the confidence to carry himself well and to relate to people confidently)
* emotional development
* physical development
* intellectual development
I do not proclaim to be Madam Know-all. In fact, I have had my fair share of failures with my older boy and have reformed, which is why my older boy claims that he is the guinea pig for my experiment in parenting skills and that his younger brother is enjoying the fruit of the experiment :-). My older boy and I have a great relationship, but that only happened when I humbled myself and faced up to my weaknesses and made a conscious effort to improve in my areas of weakness.
Parenting is not for cowards. Not at all, if we desire to be a good one. If truth be told, the same can be said of teaching - a profession which demands commitment, zeal, patience, persistence etc....
I am in my late forties and now realize why many of my friends opted for early retirement and why many of my former teachers tell me that they do not want to teach any more and have no intention to tutor either. It is one thing to teach to impart knowledge alone and another to teach in order to challenge, transform and to mold minds and touch lives. I chose the latter, being idealistic. Suffice to say that is the more difficult and challenging route but believe me, the rewards are just great because at the end of the day, in doing so, in trying to be the best that I can be, to give nothing but the best ...I became friends with almost all of my former students, many of whom still keep in touch with me until today.
So dear reader, that is the other side of my story - a tip of the iceberg account of the struggles that I have had to encounter in my endeavors as an educator. Would I want to continue lecturing in an institution? I am sure you know the answer to that one.
Finally, regardless of whether you are a teacher, student or parent or whatever your task, let us give our best, doing it for God and not unto man.
God bless you and have a nice day!
Starmandala I have nominated you for cloning so that Malaysia can have a thousand teachers like you to fill the mental void created by 40 years of benighted BN misrule.