Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
I think a truly effective teacher, at all levels, will encourage curiosity and creativity in subject-matter. The best way to do this, in my view, is mutual respect.
The teacher's idolised in this article seem to operate through fear, which eventually fades into a semblance of respect over time.
Praise doesn't make you a bad learner, learning in environments that encourage low expectations and stock answers to every situations probably will. Strictness might correlate with high expectations, but it sure as hell isn't the best way of going about it.
That said, I agree with a number of points in the article (some are implied from the provided data):
- Students with higher expectations perform closer to their potential (whether internal or external expectations, though other research suggests that internal motivation is far more important than external).
- There is possibly a formative stage of development where children's expectations are adjusted to their environment. Being surrounded by high expectations will correlate with high expectations with the learners.
- People who aren't afraid to fail will achieve more than those who are.
- Students who are in environments that emphasise strict route learning perform better on tests and memory exercises (spelling bees) than those who don't.
None of that really goes beyond common sense.
I'd really love for education to move beyond success = memorisation and into success = adaptability and understanding. The world rewards autodidacts because a lot of us worked this out on our own.
mutual respect
Yes. The question is how do you encourage curiosity and creativity in kids? No, we are not talking about adults. I see this humble request as something similar to what JFK asked when he said America should send a man to the moon. If you have the opportunity, read about the changes all levels of education in the United States had to go through to meet the demands of that "simple" challenge. When you're done come back let's compare to now
> The teacher's idolised in this article seem to operate through fear, which eventually fades into a semblance of respect over time.
I'm Ghanaian. Educated in Ghana and lived all my life in Ghana. I've had several teachers like Mr. K along the way at almost all levels. I hated my primary and junior high school English Language teacher for "good" reasons. (Especially when he commanded, yes commanded, that English is the only language permitted to be spoken on campus.) I'd say worse things about him to my parents. But my dad liked him because his homework assignments kept me busy all the time. I knew I was a smart kid but the score I had for his tests said something else about me and I wasn't ready to accept that. No! So you know what, I worked harder and harder for what I knew was mine. Progress follows hardwork.
Now, every time I have the prized opportunity of shaking that man's hand I do so with a beaming face and a sort of pride that says to him: "I can't thank you enough for coming into my life." He's proud of his students and we're proud of him too. I speak and (perhaps) write good English because he piqued my interest and taught me to strive because I can always get better.
> None of that really goes beyond common sense
Beats my imagination that we always have to be reminded about commonsense. I was told economics is plain commonsense. But there's a Nobel prize for it, right? Maybe commonsense put itself too much in our face we linger for what's rare. And that "the solution is not the obvious solution" mantra (a.k.a bullshit) might not be true after all.
If you agree, can we just return to commonsense?
You used "piqued" correctly, that already puts you beyond probably 80% of native-born English speakers in writing. ;)
I'm working on this now, and should be ready to talk more openly soon. More useful data than test scores can be measured in classroom, and I'm currently experimenting with ways of visualising mood and personalities in classrooms. It makes it much easier for teachers to know how much energy/encouragement they need to provide (or calm the class down, if necessary). It's exciting stuff and it's starting to come together nicely.
> "I can't thank you enough for coming into my life." He's proud of his students and we're proud of him too.
I've had two teachers like this personally, one was a bit gruff and was more on the 'strict' side of the continuum. He brought history to life for thousands of students at my school. The other was so passionate about teaching that he would bounce around the class like a big kid when he taught.
The things they had in common was passion and a willingness to demonstrate how hard they would work for their students. I would say that your teacher would also have displayed these qualities.
> If you agree, can we just return to common sense?
My point was that the article tried to twist observations that are more or less common sense to further an argument that harsh teachers are effective. There's not always a lot of value in simply stating common sense. Finding ways to apply it is a different thing.
On a side note, I've only brushed the surface of economics (particularly from a psychology point of view) and I've found it anything but common sense, or even logical for that matter.
Perhaps you're right. But what about honest = effective. How often do teachers change a grade because parents call in, or because the student complains? Too often. Whether it's from parents or the institution, there are a lot of outside factors that pressure teachers to give good grades even when they are not deserved.
No matter which way you put it, getting a bad grade always hurts, especially when good grades are being given in other classes. I think that's one of the reasons that teachers who are "tougher" are looked down upon. People think they're mean, but sometimes they're just being honest and want you to succeed so much that they wouldn't dare give you a grade that doesn't reflect your actual progress. For the same reason, teachers don't want to have this label, so they resort to being "easier" and less honest.
This certainly happens at the high school and middle school level, but recent news has looked at grading practices at Harvard. There was a grader who admitted to giving out As that were undeserved, and although I couldn't find that article this one talks about how A is the most frequently given grade at Harvard (while A- is the median) [1].
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/04/harvard-grade-infla...
Also, I see a difference between being a hard marker and being a harsh teacher. I don't really have a problem with the former, the article here talks mostly about the latter. My problem is with anyone who promotes 'strictness/harshness' in classrooms.
Can't agree enough that there are problems with the system in general, and a society that wants everyone to succeed while also placing so much emphasis on getting people to fit bell curves. I'm working on getting new data out of classrooms right now: quantified engagement, mood, desired learning conditions, preferred methods of content delivery etc.
I think that the main root of the problems we have is a desire for things to be 'right' or 'wrong'. It kills curiosity, engagement and creativity and in no way reflects the real world.
EDIT: clarity
But it worked, the newspaper and yearbook were consistently the best in the country. It wasn't just a niche club, they were actually credit classes that filled up. It was actually cool* to be on staff, despite how seriously it was taken (though thinking back, my main contribution was installing NES emulators on all the machines, so it couldn't have been that serious)...
Edit: to clarify, I can't recall if he "ripped" into people for spelling errors/grammatical mistakes, though he'd point them out in a funny way and move on. But boy, if you did something like a professional breach...such as interview your same best friend for an article that you did last month, he might go off on it. Sloppy writing (burying the lede) was also jumped on, but in a constructive way. But that kind of constructive criticism...singling someone out in class...I didn't see it much out of high school.
I would not be surprised for research to demonstrate that children perform to the expectations given them, particularly when those expectations are clear and consistent. In fact, most people thrive in environments where they understand the rules, rewards, penalties, and where those structures are evenly and consistently enforced.
Correcting mistakes is one thing but insulting people making errors is probably harmful not helpful.
It's cliche because there's some merit: he wasn't our friend, but had an incredibly positive effect on our abilities in the subject.
I've no strong opinion whether public shaming is good or bad with spelling errors. Maybe the hypersensitivity we've culturally adopted to the emotional state of children biases our perception of the impact of such things.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante
"In 1987, 27 percent of all Mexican Americans who scored 3 or higher on the calculus AP exam were students at Garfield High"
While he was rather strict/demanding, too, the article also hints to one of the more important causes of his success: "He rejected the common practice of ranking students from first to last and instead frequently told his students to press themselves as hard as possible in their assignments." In educational science the former is called social reference standard and the latter individual reference standard. While sadly the former is still in use more often, longitudinal studies have shown a strong positive effect on achievement for individual reference standards (I only have a German source right now: Rheinberg & Krug, 1999). The reason seems to be that students seem to attribute ratings with social reference to stable attributes like talent ("I'm just not good at math"), whereas individual benchmarks are more often interepreted as a result of (lack of) effort. Interestingly the socially disadvantaged have shown the strongest results with individual reference standards, just as in the case of Jaime Escalante.
"Over the next few years Escalante's calculus program continued to grow but not without its own price. Tensions that surfaced when his career began at Garfield escalated. In his final years at Garfield, Escalante received threats and hate mail from various individuals.[8] By 1990, he had lost the math department chairmanship. At this point Escalante's math enrichment program had grown to 400+ students. His class sizes had increased to over 50 students in some cases. This was far beyond the 35 student limit set by the teachers' union, which in turn increased criticism of Escalante's work. In 1991, the number of Garfield students taking advanced placement examinations in math and other subjects jumped to 570. That same year, citing faculty politics and petty jealousies,[citation needed] Escalante and Jiménez left Garfield. Escalante found new employment at Hiram W. Johnson High School in Sacramento, California. At the height of Escalante's influence, Garfield graduates were entering the University of Southern California in such great numbers that they outnumbered all the other high schools in the working-class East Los Angeles region combined.[9] Even students who failed the AP went on to become star students at California State-Los Angeles in large numbers.[8]
Angelo Villavicencio took the reins of the program after their departure and taught the remaining 107 A.P. students in two classes for the next year. 67 of Villavicencio's students went on to take the A.P. exam and 47 passed. Villavicencio's request for a third class due to class size was denied and the following spring he followed Escalante and quit Garfield. The math program's decline at Garfield became apparent following the departure of Escalante and other teachers associated with its inception and development. In just a few years, the number of A.P. calculus students at Garfield who passed their exams dropped by more than 80 percent. In 1996, Villavicencio contacted Garfield's new principal, Tony Garcia, and offered to come back to help revive the dying calculus program. His offer was rejected.[8]"
It seems like the actually determining feature was that,
> "The core belief of these teachers was, 'Every student in my room is underperforming based on their potential, and it's my job to do something about it—and I can do something about it,'"
Punishing people for fucking up - traditionally what we think of as "tough", I think - is just punishing people for regressing to the mean: http://crookedtimber.org/2010/09/28/mean-and-regressive/
Teachers are not successful because they are strict (it's not directly causative): they are successful because they are in command of the classroom.
You can gain better command of a classroom through fear of abuse, yes, but this is not a method we should aspire to.
> Now I'm not calling for abuse; I'd be the first to complain if a teacher called my kids names
No, the article explicitly creates a separation.
- Get the students genuinely interested in listening to the teacher. This is critical. If a student has no interest in listening to you, they will most likely under-perform. On the other hand, a not so high IQ'ed student might over-perform if they actually become interested in listening and learning. Inspiration and motivation are the key.
- Make each student feel that the teacher is talking to them . Yes, sort of personalized. I remember a professor in college and every time he spoke, I could relate to it and really loved listening to him because it felt like he was only talking to me. Guess what, I excelled in that class.
- Encourage students to talk, ask questions, debate whatever.Related to #1 point.
- Actually take an interest in students if possible. For a small class size, this is not very difficult. Get to know your students as much as possible outside. Lot of students do bad in class not because they are stupid but because they might have other factors in their personal life impacting their performance. Find out if possible and figure out a way to work around that. Remember, everyone is different. Every student is different.
- Last but not the least, be interested in teaching. Yes, did I need to say that ? If you really love to teach, you will find out ways to get your students to do well.
If you are good at most of the above, one could care less if you are tough or soft or whatever.
This assumes that the secret to the student's success is the teacher, not the student him/herself. The article's view of the teacher's role is to push/inspire the student into putting in the required effort to learn things on their own (mostly by reading books, doing exercises and thinking independently). Students shouldn't get their knowledge from teachers, but from books (I think it's dangerous to establish teachers as gatekeepers of knowledge and as authority figures).
People are not completely wrong, though, when they say that the old paradigm was more efficiently executed than the new one. The reason might not be that it is more efficient in general though, but simply that we did it for thousands of years, while the new approach is only done for a few centuries. It's very likely that we go too far and need to add more discipline, but that is part of the stuff science can do and will do in a few centuries anyway.
The main reason I am writing this comment is that I believe the way to progress is forward not backwards. The idea can not be to see that a new paradigm applied for 3-5 generations of teachers is less efficient then the old one that was applied for hundreds or thousands of generations and then just go backwards. The idea should be to improve upon what we do now. Yes, teachers of now need to learn again to be more demanding and they should regain the power to do so with the necessary force. But explanation, praise and convincing need to stay in the game! At least for myself I can say that I learned much more in the last 2 years then in all 13 years of school, because learning on the internet works based on motivation, detailed explanations and rewarding, "gamey" technology and not on old people in front of the class who tell me what an idiot I am.
I couldn't disagree more, forward only implies new, which isn't necessarily better.
The old paradigm of teaching, I find, was built on a lack of rules; evolving naturally from the one-on-one home upbringing, to apprenticeships and into the modern classroom. (Feel free to add jumps.)
Obviously it had flaws, as with a despotic ruler the students were at the mercy if his/her whims, but from what we're seeing today that hasn't been mitigated in the least. Despite serious efforts (teacher evaluations, PISA testing, etc.)
Instead, because teachers are being scrutinized down to the atom and the school system is monopolizing education, we have children who aren't taught to respect their teachers, and parents who aren't taking appropriate action to it because teaching is being brought out of their area of responsibility.
How can we hope to best human nature at teaching when human nature is something we've barely scratched the surface of? Is it really right to bet our children's future on a live experiment in human understanding? Yes, of course we have to attempt to improve, and obviously there is and always has been room for improvement, but the teachers weren't the enemy in that regard. They were generally doing what they could every day to make kids learn.
Now, instead of teachers, we have politicians trying to secure the upcoming election by ripping apart the status quo so they are able to use fancy sentences and faulty statistics in the media.
Maybe a better comparison would be algebra and geometry since he taught those classes but other teachers did as well. Did his students perform any better than the students of other teachers? I would say not although I don't have the data to back it up. I had another teacher for algebra and then him for geometry and when I was in his geometry class with other students that had him for algebra I felt we were even. I never felt like the kids who had him for algebra were way ahead of me when it came to doing the algebra that came up in geometry.
And also where they prohibit them from outside interactions and tightly monitor their social lives (or lack thereof).
Hardly seems permissive to me.
Made up example would be math teacher assigning two hours a day of exercises and worksheets on simple equations, while other teachers already moved on and successfully teach "difficult" equations.
Made up over the top example would be teacher that checks your notebook every other day whether it is nice, organized and colored. He would assign three hours of work of cutting and pasting and coloring and what not every day and make you rework historical diorama five times.
However, that teacher could still miss that you have no idea what happened during historical period he is teaching and do not remember single name or date.
(1) They had high standards. (2) They liked us. (3) They were interested in the subject.
I've been unable to express what makes a good teacher more concretely than that.
(1) Something to teach me.
(2) Willingness to teach me.
(3) A serious attitude towards teaching once he decides on that.
My observation on them is consistent with what the article conveyed.
1 - They knew exactly how much a top student was capable of, and kept the bar at the top of that range. No higher, and definitely no lower.
2 - They were passionate masters of the material. They were teachers, who covered computer science and biology. They were biologists and computer scientists who taught. (And economists, etc)
3 - They taught the same classes over and over. (Like the conductor) This was perhaps enabled by 2, and allowed them to know 1.
4 - They weren't afraid to give bad grades.
5 - They prepared you both for the exam (AP, final, or whatever) and to think deeply. It wasn't (Content OR Reasoning), it was (Content AND Reasoning).
Teachers like this are few and far between.
I will define great as "People who I thank later for the lasting impact of what I learned from them."
And he found that all of them "deliberately picked unsentimental coaches who would challenge them and drive them to higher levels of performance."
The article ignores selection bias from the get go. Participants in most high school activities [in the US] tend to be self-selected. In the string section of an orchestra, they are not only self selected but also thoroughly weeded out by the institution; there are no novices or dabblers.
Also known as Regression toward the mean[1]. Talked about a bunch in Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean
Specifcally,
-Are schools really eschewing rote memorization?
-Are schools really less "strict" than before? Does a teacher really have less control of their classroom than today?
-Are helicopter parents really more of thing today than in the past?
-Are kids really not being taught they can fail a class?
I've yet to see any evidence cited for the above assertions, but I do hear them constantly being repeated.
In the USA, teachers used to be able to hit students, about 30 years ago. Things have changed quite a bit.
That's dramatically over-simplifying. Praising kids for inherent qualities, or for achievements, can kill self-esteem/achievement. Praising kids for effort seems to work quite well.
Also this article reveres rote learning in a way that I disagree with and I think many of you would disagree with in a context closer to home. How many of you would like to see CS 101 classes be dominated by memorization of semicolon placement in C++?
> How many of you would like to see CS 101 classes be
> dominated by memorization of semicolon placement in C++?
Edit: coincidentally, this was just posted: http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2014/01/why-so-few-grow...!
SAT scores are mentioned exactly once in the article (well, twice, but in reference to the same finding), I have copy-pasted it for your convenience:
> When she applied the ["Grit Scale"] to incoming West Point cadets, she found that those who scored higher were less likely to drop out of the school's notoriously brutal summer boot camp known as "Beast Barracks." West Point's own measure—an index that includes SAT scores, class rank, leadership and physical aptitude—wasn't able to predict retention.
A teacher without inclination and ability to better the students would perform bad even with your approach, which is "whatever approach to make student interested".
I think to read the article in article's spirit, he is talking only about teachers interested and able to "teach". The article's definition of teacher is someone who can teach (make students better) and not someone who is appointed by school and is not interested in students.
Considering this, the question OP is trying to address is : among the various approaches which is the best approach to teach.
I would say, an article containing analysis on data is more informative to me than just making a statement, whatever approach is right.
But:
0.) Practice is not the same as rote learning especially in math above third grade. Practice in math means that you have to solve many different exercises and occasionally having to come up with solutions by yourself. Practice in math means that you are occasionally faced with exercises you have not seen before and you have to logic-think your way out of that.
Rote learning is quite opposite of that. Drilling essentially the same exercises over and over is opposite of that too.
Incidentally, those international tests try to confront students with unfamiliar situations and measure how they perform there.
1.) Why is everybody so obsessed with multiplication tables? It is something 6-7 years old have to learn. I just doubt that whatever happened in the first grade is all that much important years later on when you are 16 years old (age those international tests are done).
Even if you had worst first grade teacher in the world that did not taught you how much 2+2 is, teacher in fourth grade was supposed to force you to learn that. How come it did not happened?
2.) Is it possible that while super tough teacher in the beginning could be great for talented committed students, but not really match for average one? Only student with huge commitment and talent would persist and all others would gave up.
I was such average kid in music, hated that and stopped playing as soon as I could. It is quite possible that if I would find at least something enjoyable on lessons, I would learn more.
Of course, it does not really matter whether I play music today. But, it would matter if I would learn to hate math or computers the same way as I hated music practice.
Clearly, What America Needs is spelling bee champions.
The article states that "constructive, even painful feedback" is necessary. It conjures an idea of being hurtful to students. That's not the truth though. It means giving uncompromising honest feedback. When something is incorrect, it is stated as being incorrect, and a student can learn. That might be painful to the student's ego to hear that they were wrong, and is something we might tiptoe around now, but it's not being cruel, in fact it's being respectful to the student. It's not the pain that's good for you, it's the honest and constructive feedback, and if you feel some pain in hearing that, deal with it. But show me a study that shows that going around calling your students idiots who will never make anything of themselves will help them because it's painful and I will be surprised. In response, pain isn't good for you, honest evaluation is good for you, and you might feel pain when you hear it.
2. Drill, baby drill. The article mentions drills, but the real takeaway from the article is memorization. I'm in favor of memorization in terms of learning, because it allows you to conjure up simple methods without having to go through a process. When I want to know what 87 is, I know it's 56, I don't have to count on my fingers. When I need to think about what 8270 is, I know it's 5740 because I know 87 and 72 off the top of my head. That said, drills in school aren't necessarily the most effective way to memorize something. Many memory training things use very different methods, and we don't even try to teach our children with those methods. If we recognize that it's commitment to memory that is important and not drills, we could be more effective.
3. Failure is an option. This I absolutely agree with. But part of the problem we have is that we have institutionalized the fear of failure. You say that failure is a good thing, but the article pushes for antiquated systems where a failure can have all sorts of permanent social ramifications. From primary school where a student gets held back, to secondary school where grades determine your choice of post-secondary education, to university where a poor GPA can ruin your options. We rarely get an opportunity to learn from these mistakes without judgment. If a teacher allowed you to retake a test until you understood the material, that would allow failure to be an option, but we concern ourselves with the logistical problems of having students at different points in the curriculum. So we are afraid that if we fail we will not keep up, and once we stop keeping up, there's little point in trying any more. The class marches on, and even if we learn the things we failed the first time around, that test is already taken.
4. Strict vs. nice is again honest vs. dishonest. A strict teacher says "Do this assignment by this date and I will grade it for you." Then they accept the assignment on that date and grade it. A student who is late completing the assignment asks the strict teacher to submit it late, and the strict teacher says no. The "nice" teacher will say yes. The strict teacher was honest and forthright in their request. The nice teacher wasn't. When you're dealing with someone who honors their word, it's easy to know what is expected, and it's easy to respect them. When you're dealing with the nice teacher, you're a bit uncomfortable, why did you do the assignment on time when Jimmy handed his in late and didn't have anything happen? Then next time when you have an assignment due, you aren't sure if you have given your best work, (and you're afraid of failure), but you think maybe the nice teacher will let you hand it in late. You wait to finish it until it's late, and then you're uncertain whether the teacher will still accept it, and eventually it just goes unsubmitted altogether. With the strict teacher, you know they will only accept it tomorrow, so you do what you can. Or you don't. Either way, you know the consequences.
But what that gets twisted into is an idea that a strict teacher has to be dishonest, and tell the students they are worse than they are. That they have to hurt them to make them feel better. Again, I don't think it's the hurt that helps, but the honesty and integrity.
The article gives an anecdote about coddling a child in first and second grade vs. a third grade teacher that tells them to get to work. This isn't really a matter of strictness the way the rest of the point is. It also has not a lot to do with learning in the traditional sense, but more of learning in a social sense. The big takeaway in this is still integrity. When you make a reasonable request to the class, and a child in the class has an issue with it, do you modify that request? You you make things lighter for them. If you do, you're undermining your own integrity. You're saying "What I asked you to do wasn't important, so if you have a problem with it, you can make me change it." It's hard to hit a moving target like that.
5. Creativity can be learned. Creativity is only as useful as the student's ability to express it. A problem with this model is that an excellent student doesn't have an opportunity to demonstrate any special talent. Neither do they have much ability to do so in the current system. Does that mean that it's better to regress to a point of rapping knuckles with yardsticks and ineffective drills?
6. Grit trumps talent. "Grit" is a person's ability to continue to work consistently. When a person gives up on something, it's often because attempting to continue working on it causes unbearable stress, or there's an absolute indifference to it. The stress is going to come from a fear of judgment from failure. Something is hard, that means we're recognizing that we might make a mistake, that we don't understand it fully and if we ask for help or show something incorrectly we will be ridiculed. This means we barely dip our toes into things we struggle with, and don't get interested. How will moving to a culture of fear and pain teach students to be optimistic?
7. Praise makes you weak. Yes, praise in general is pretty pointless. It's vapid and hurtful, because it makes students seek more praise. Instead, if a student is left alone, they're going to feel intrinsic motivation from the actual learning. There's an element of overjustification effect that takes place.
That said, the absence of praise doesn't mean that a culture of insults and diminuation should take its place
8. Stress makes us strong Not really. I just strictly disagree with that. Dealing with stress makes you strong as you learn to deal with it. Being under stress is harmful. Being put into a stressful class will not make you strong because you can't do anything about it. Sort of the difference between a good exercise regimen where you damage your muscles and then let them heal, and a situation where you're constantly overstressing them and never have an opportunity to have a break. One will build strength, the other can cause long-term damage.
The Mr. K in the article is finally described as cold, unyielding and kind of scary. These are not bad qualities. Being Cold just means he's not likely to yield to an emotional request, unyielding indicates he's going to stand by his word. Like I mentioned earlier, honesty and integrity is a good thing, and he embodies these characteristics. Being scary is a bit of a wild card, it means he's causing anxiety in the students, that's probably not great for performance, but it probably leads them to not question his requests, which just leads to a stronger understanding of his expectation.
The Mr. K character in the story doesn't embody the sort of things that the individual points seem to.
You can be a kind and fair teacher, you don't have to lose your temper, you don't have to yell, you don't have to tell your students their work is terrible when it's average. You don't have to embarrass them in front of their peers.
But you will be more effective if you are honest, trustworthy, and challenge your students to excel. If you structure your class so that the student is graded based on how well they know the subject rather than how few times they have made mistakes. If you provide the resources that a student needs to improve themselves when they've fallen behind the pack, and if you provide the resources that a student needs when they've excelled beyond the pack.
Because come on, no other areas see this. Math it hard too, but do math teachers scream on promising students? They usually don't.
Maybe sports are another exception.
It's sad how irresponsible journalists like this make a greater impact on public debate with flimsy articles like these.
Of course the ones that showed up for the concert liked him - the ones that wanted to piss on his grave were, I'd guess, off doing that. Confirmation bias much, WSJ?
This "torture" idea came up in my mind just reading the title. Having a professor that is being harsh only objectively may be good in a limited sense, but in my experience this is just rare (and I had "the joy" of being educated by a good lot of harsh teachers). Being harsh objectively is the only kind that is supposedly beneficial, and it is "supposedly" because its efficiency is just very dependent on the subject's susceptibility. This is rare because it requires a lot of discipline on the teacher's part. Most often than not, around an harsh attitude the reason is pushed aside to make room for ever-dominating emotive behavior. On the teacher's side this leads to an unconstrained way of pulling the strings, and on the pupil's side - to cede and degenerate into fear, close-mindedness, and self disrespect, among many others. Don't get me wrong, the primary results will be there. The teaching's goal will be reached, if we're to ignore the costs (and we often do). I just guess the difficulty of summing it all up or realistically considering the entire thing on its true value as a parent or policy-maker if one hasn't been subjected to it and its effects.
"My old teacher Mr. K seldom praised us. His highest compliment was «not bad.» It turns out he was onto something." "the belief, the faith really, in students' ability to do better."
That of course is valid only if the amount of disparage in pupil's overall social interaction is minor, otherwise there wouldn't be enough confidence to build up in the first place. The writer praises her teacher for his results and concludes that the means must have been justified. I don't. What I see is the most rudimentary automatic negative-reaction based system. Any deviation from the expected parameters causes a literally negative reaction from the ruler that enforces the entire process. A most rudimentary form of teaching. It doesn't need any calibration to student's profile, it doesn't require much refinement of pedagogics as the task of getting back (somehow) in the normal parameters falls mostly on the student, and it definitely relieves the teacher of any kind of stress for the locus of control that is the pupil performance not being in his direct reach. (Actually, a harsh teacher gets rid of his stress in the lessons.) As a researched material this article presents itself, I'm disappointed of the conclusion. I expected efficiency without getting back to the old and brute ways.
The state of the education may not be rosy, but getting into "harsh" seems a bit extreme to me. Instead of "harsh" I would call for "serious". You only need teachers to show you the way and the limits. It's you and only you that should be harsh on yourself, no one else.