Monday, June 27, 2022

Blaming Teachers For Other Educational Variables

Rarely, if ever, does formal education touch upon things that are of ultimate philosophical or practical significance.  The quadratic formula, the arbitrary names for taxonomy, and the general historic culture of random civilizations are not at all things that necessary to understand the core of reality (logical axioms and the nature of consciousness) or to live and survive in the modern or ancient world.  Memorizing and regurgitating information that amounts to sheer hearsay, such as all claims that historical events like wars or elections actually happened (as opposed to there being evidence suggesting but not proving that they happened), is not even true rationality, though at least small amounts of selective rationality are prerequisites to even understand relatively trivial things like these claims.

If a student struggles to learn and utilize any of these things and no one is fallaciously thought to be unintelligent, the tendency is for either the student or teacher to automatically be blamed, even though neither of them is necessarily mishandling anything and the fault might not be intrinsically tied to only one or the other if someone truly is at fault.  With as many variables as teaching has and the fact that so many of them could change, it is not self-evident, and therefore not necessarily true, that there even is a party that is doing something wrong if a child has difficulties learning.  Plenty of factors beyond the control of any person could come together to maximize educational challenges.

However, public school teachers are irrationally expected to assume that they are at fault for a student's failure when there is absolutely nothing about being the teacher that means one must be the source of the problem.  Perhaps the student has immense family troubles, physical or mental health issues, or other unfortunate circumstances that impede learning.  Perhaps they are just unmotivated or apathetic even if they do not have these specific difficulties.  There are many possible reasons why a student might not be effectively learning that are not related to the teacher at all.  In actuality, a person is plainly irrational if they cannot understand this no matter how integrated into formal education they are.  Successful learning in an educational setting depends on more than just one thing, no matter what anyone believes or says to the contrary.

After all, if these aforementioned troublesome conditions on the part of the student's life are met, it would not matter if the teacher is clear, concise, and relevant in their communication, if they are thoroughly familiar with the subject matter (as much as one can be given that school subjects are usually not truly knowable beyond possibilities and perceptions thanks to epistemological limitations), or if they are open and friendly with their students and the parents.  The teacher could succeed on every front and the student could still struggle, and even then it might or might not be due to a fault of there own.  Students who still fail to learn despite the teacher's best efforts could still not be wholly to blame.  This is vital but not particularly difficult to realize.

The preemptive desire to blame a particular person whenever a situation like this goes wrong is born out of irrational ideas about the reason for academic struggles, as someone will either be blamed randomly, with a different random person potentially getting blamed in each situation, or they will be blamed simply because they have a role like teacher or student.  There is nothing about having either role, or being the parent of a struggling student, that inherently has the largest or any part in sabotaging a particular student's progress.  It is possible for a teacher to be ineffective, lazy, or ignorant; it is possible for a student to be unmotivated or intentionally reluctant.  It is still not possible for all teachers or students to always have some blame or any at all.

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