Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Schooling

The best kept secret about education is that learning depends mostly on the person doing the learning. Teachers are priceless, but they can only show the way when the student is lost and guide him to the right source to do his learning. Other than that, the burden of learning is on the student's shoulders.

I am writing this because it bothers me when people blame the teachers for the lack of learning on the students' part. So many times, the school districts complain about not getting teachers of quality for lack of funds. True, a bad teacher can turn a student off, but lack of funds doesn't necessarily mean bad teachers.

The problem is in keeping a well-kept and safe environment for learning. Here the weight is on the administrators' shoulders. When discipline is a problem, no teacher can teach and no student can learn. It should be made clear to a student, especially in young age, that learning is important and the responsibility of learning belongs to him.

I also dislike the situation when the parents are blamed for a student's every problem. In disciplinary problems, yes. There, the parents may have a role, but if a student doesn't do his homework properly or shows faults in something other than discipline, the parents are not to blame. Teaching is the teachers', the school districts', and the students' job. If parents are that powerful teachers, then why do we have schools?

Another thing that bothers me on this subject is the practice of some snotty higher education institutions’ hogging of important learning materials that should belong to the public. Years ago, when I was in school, they didn't let us take a tape recorder to class, because they said they had the copyright to the learning material and a tape-recorder would make its' circulation possible. What a waste of pride! Instead of working toward the common goal of educating the public, the university was thinking of its own ends. The funny thing is, the subject matter was about some common knowledge passed down for generations, which was freely available in the libraries. Nowadays, it is all over the internet. The university gave the teaching material an aura of exclusivity, whereas there was nothing exclusive about what was being taught. The internet, therefore, has been a blessing despite its shortcomings. No wonder they bad-mouth it now!

And to think that I wrote all this because a school district called the parents of a very-well behaved boy and blamed his parents for his lack of attention or faults in learning... Lol!