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From: edhall@randvax.UUCP (Ed Hall)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: XSO IQ (Really teachers...)
Message-ID: <2572@randvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 28-Jun-85 15:30:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: randvax.2572
Posted: Fri Jun 28 15:30:51 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 3-Jul-85 08:26:54 EDT
References: <1476@utah-gr.UUCP> <1560099@acf4.UUCP>
Reply-To: edhall@rand-unix.UUCP (Ed Hall)
Distribution: net
Organization: Rand Corp., Santa Monica
Lines: 27
Keywords: literacy, teaching, parenting
Summary: It ain't always the kids or their folks...

From mms1646@acf4.UUCP (Michael M. Sykora), responding to Jerry Hollombe

> >Then  they  wonder  why  their  children can't read when they graduate high
> >school.
>
> This has more to do with the students and the parents than with the teachers.

Not necessarily so.  My first-grade teacher turned me off to reading--made
it into complete drudgework--and as a result I lost all interest in it,
even at home. (This certainly worried my folks, who tried quite hard to
have me moved to another class.)  No problem, though--my second-grade
teacher believed in challenging her students, and I jumped five reading
grade-levels in one year... with the same set of parents, and the same
*me*.

Now, I'm not one to generalize solely from an anecdotal experience,
especially my own, but I and many people I talk to seem to have known a few
phenomenal teachers, a lot of middlin' ones, and some real turkeys.  But
what is increasingly a problem is the burned-out teacher, under stress from
meddling administrations and parents and large classes of increasingly
unruly students, forced into performing duties rather than creating
challenges.  Our school systems seem to be getting better and better at
creating this new kind of teacher, making bad teachers out of good ones
rather than making good ones better.  Our loss; our nation's loss.

		-Ed Hall
		decvax!randvax!edhall