Originally posted by anna!
What is your experience with private school teachers, if you've never been to a private school? Heresay?
"my experience" is basically things that i've heard from friends who have attended private schools, and people i've spoken to at uni about the issue. no, it's not far-ranging, but i never insinuated that it was
And if what you're saying is true, why is having conservative teachers in a school environment a bad thing? IMO: parents pay to send their kids to private schools because they hope they'll turn out a certain way, career-wise. They want them to be the next generation of lawyers, doctors, academics, CEOs and so forth. Existing in these positions requires a certain amount of conservatism.
this is, sort of, a valid point. but i *do* think conservatism is a bad thing in that it stifles creativity and free thought. of course there is the argument that stability and so forth are more important (though obviously there needs to be some form of balance either way), but this is more an ideological break between us than anything else - something which obviously can't really be argued.
I had teachers who were older and very set in their ways, and I learned a lot from them about the necessity of stability and structure in life. I also had younger teachers who were more radical and who taught me that some things in life needed to be challenged and changed. I don't see that having a school full of radicals would be more beneficial to any student who wanted to go and exist in the same society as 95% of the population.
i was influenced by the more radical teachers at my high school, and i'm still able to co-exist with the more conservative members of society (and the other 75%)...learning to appreciate diversity and embrace individuality and expression does not necessarily make one incapable of getting along with everyone else - in fact, imo, it helps to create better relationships within the community, and breeds an attitude wherein learning about others is encouraged.
so, for me, a school of radicals would be better than a school of conservatives - though obviously neither is likely as there will always be a merging of ideas in any large community.
In Year 9, I had a maths teacher I didn't really like. He was a good teacher, but I chose to boycott his classes and talk all the time, and I failed for the first time in my life. When I got to Year 12, there were questions in my maths exams that used some of the basic maths foundations we'd been taught in Year 9 when I wasn't listening, and I couldn't answer them.
i'm not exactly sure how this applies to what i said?
Every year of high school is vital. You don't get to choose your teachers and the notion that you might get stuck with someone completely inept for an entire year is part of the reason I'd rather not send my kids to a public high school.
my reasoning was that i'd prefer to have at least a few radical teachers of (an imnsho) positive influence which provide the basis for better learning -and a few shit teachers- as opposed to an entire system of conservatism, filled with the *vast* majority of conservative teachers. at the very least, i think a balance is required.
and i don't -at all- think every year of high school - i understand that different situations and schools are going to have different results, but i found very little of my high schooling was vital, and i can only assume the same would have happened at a private school (actually, i wouldn't have survived at one...i would have been expelled, i'd say
). i didn't pay much attention (just because i was a stupid know-it-all kid who thought i had the best ideas about everything...some would say not much has changed
) in high school at all - actually, i didn't really do *any* work until i hit year eleven and twelve, and even then i did virtually nothing outside of class itself.
but this hasn't had any dramatic effect on me - i'm still entirely capable of logical thinking, i've done pretty well at uni (and have experienced nothing negative after my slackness at h.s.)...basically, i see what you're saying, but i don't think high school is all that important to all of us - some, maybe, but not all.
if utilised in the right way, perhaps high school can be useful in developing learning techniques for use later in life (well, that's indisputable i guess
), but my original point was that i don't like much of the private schooling system wherein this can often come at the detriment of free thought and individuality.
And that flows into the radical thing - we had a shitty Chinese teacher one year, he was really awful and we weren't learning anything. So we all made our opinion known, took a stand and he was shipped out.
my school relieved two chinese teachers of their duty (in year seven and eight) in very similar circumstances when my class was unhappy with their teaching too. this was the only case it occurred, but it did still happen.
I spent a few years on the Student Representative Council and we did actually make changes. We raised money for charities, improved library resources, had wheelchair facilities put in place, and so on. So you see, we were taught to challenge the system and make changes and more importantly, not to settle for second best; and in doing so, we improved our chances of being well educated in our time at school.
oh come on - that's not exactly radical! yes, they're changes, but no more so than anything the parents' association would have been implementing anyway! not particularly ground-breaking
If you're talking about individual teachers being liberal and individualist, that's different. Each teacher brings something of themselves to the way they teach and a good teacher will send his or her students away with the ability to construct their own thoughts on the subject they've been learning. In that way, teachers - good teachers - do encourage the individual to be able to think for themselves.
this was what i meant, yes
I agree with TiTTy. If you can give a child access to a huge range of excellent opportunities, that's better than forcing them to fossick for their own (often meagre) opportunities. I say often meagre because what student would be able to source and fund a student-only language tour to Italy, or find and fund a team to participate in the solar car rally? The opportunities that are offered in private school environments are often unavailable, or at least unattainable, to many people outside of the school. There is just such a wide range of creative endeavour, political activism, travel, and so forth that's offered at private schools. The choice to participate in all or none of these in itself is an expression of individuality.
christ, *i* agree with this. i'm not against opportunities or anything like that - what distresses me is the apparent difficulty in combining the above with a more liberal environment and teaching approach.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
