[Editors note: The Author is somewhat er um youth challenged and as such all of his memories harken to an era and age prior to the internets and what not , things may have changed somewhat . The author is not optimistic though ]
It's teachers day <traditional assorted salutations and congratulatory observances here>
I have to say during school ( std I - X ) I can count on my fingers the number of teachers who I have any respect for whatsoever .
Most of them sucked ass at their jobs with zero interest in teaching ( the bishops school to this day, on a per capita basis if I may, or the ratio of excellent teachers to not that great , remains leaps and bounds ahead of other institutions I have been in or heard about . It really has been in my own experience the one bright spot. Its position on corporal punishment continues to remain barbaric and outdated but you know nothing is perfect )
College (XI XII and FYBsc) its not fair to judge on my part since I attended a sum total of maybe 8 to ten lectures. Each and every one of those was an hour or so of my life I am never getting back . They all sucked uniformly
The next step in my journey of ha-ha learning was six years in Indore getting an MCA
Barring hmm 3 or four professors (over 11 semesters with six odd papers in each semester) the rest were truly abysmal like so bad that its hard to describe precisely in words how incompetent they were both at teaching and subject matter
I have often wondered how do you fix this . I have no kids so this is unlikely to directly affect me in anyway but lets say for a movement I am thinking about the general good ( yes I know I had to practice twice before I could type it with a straight face )
One obvious issue is that we are clearly ( in the past at least; I have no idea if anything has changed) attracting the wrong kinds of people to teaching . The biggest difference between good great and lousy teachers has always been to me , very obviously, that the good ones are interested in teaching like genuinely interested they don’t see their job as anything but . Also a deep love of what they are teaching and an ability too impart a little bit of that to their students .
I have no idea what the free market solution to this is .
Currently teacher salaries suck. In general. I am going to assume this is a simple supply and demand problem . Too many teachers . And I am really not sure how you fix that
The other real issue IMO is the paying customer aka the parent has like zero insight into how awesome teachers are especially when the kids are around 13-14. First as a parent the only real metric you have are grades
If student grades were the only way to evaluate teachers it drives terrible incentives ( you teach to the test ) and also when I hit teenage I cannot imagine any scenario where I was discussing my teachers with my parents , like its not even close. No idea if kids have changed that much today but I mean come on …
So what does the customer do then in this case?
And finally the really tough one… I have been in spite of thinking about this multiple times unable to come up with a way to decide who good teachers are on a metric based basis.
If was a principal and I had to do performance reviews how do you even start where teachers are concerned
There are no bottom line metrics you can measure
There are no 360 degree reviews that would make sense and peer reviews are also meaningless since teaching is not a team sport
You could solicit parental feedback but again kind of brain dead
There are no commitments based ratings that make sense
So we are left with a very very high degree of subjectivity at the hands of the principal.
The one thing I would love to see is schools identifying great teachers and paying them extra to train incoming teachers or current teachers who are not that great but again subjectivity abounds
There is a class of profession where if you get better it means very little to anyone and so getting better will not result in any rewards for you from your customers or your boss
For example a barista who makes better coffee… no one cares Starbucks cannot set pricing around it or salaries
A server who typically averages 10 to 12 % tips gets twice as good at his / her job sorry you are not going to magically start averaging 25% tips
A personal trainer who suddenly gets much better can raise their rates but its doesn’t line up neatly with their skill level market pressures around a variety of factors will start interfering .
even jobs where you can rewarded more as you get better ( software developer for example ) start hitting all kinds of barriers no matter how much you keep improving
My biggest fear and sneaking suspicions is that teaching is one of those areas in a very strong way.
Where as long as you are not a total fuck up and sometimes even then , there is zero incentive for you to improve as a teacher especially if you really don’t love or hate the job, its just a job ( and don’t even get me started about teachers unions )
I have no idea how you fix that so to sum up the kids are all totes screwed but it will probably come out ok in the end ( or not which is always the hallmark of a good drama )
