I had the privilege at several points in my life, after my own post secondary education, to teach in several post secondary institutions, both in UK and in Canada. I viewed these opportunities with a sense of awe, for a while at least.
When I was a post-secondary student myself in UK, I went off full of trepidation into a new, rather more liberal world than the one I had inhabited during my secondary education, in a school with almost a thousand years of history. The new environment was going to be different. Somehow I was going to learn the "real stuff" now from "professors" who somehow were far more elevated than the teachers I had had in secondary education. How wrong I was.
They were friendlier, more familiar for the most part. They failed to inspire me. Some were buffoons, posers, some seemed interested in the art and notion of genuinely teaching, but failed to grab my attention. I wanted to learn and synthesize, while it seemed that some of my classmates were rather putting in time before the student union bar opened. It was an eye opener to personal responsibility. If I wanted to learn something, I had to use what I was hearing as a spring board for further personal study of something else other than the sudsy bottom of a beer glass. I have to admit that at times the lure of the beer glass was inordinately strong.
Upon my own graduation, I was amazed to find that my application to work in a another University department in Wales was accepted. I was appointed to the highest salary ever granted a graduate of my program and I thought I had it made. Visions of professorial grandeur after some very interesting work periods were visualised.
Reality was quite different. I was actually expected to sit in front of a class and teach. I was younger than some of my students. Ooooer! That was quite disconcerting. These were bright, intelligent people. I was expected to impart things to them which would expand their knowledge and in a way that made it interesting for them. This was serious business! I knew instantly that I had to find a way to engage these people. Then I remembered where I had just come from and understood that they were thinking about how long it was to get to the student union bar. Non the less they engaged me and put effort into their studies because I worked hard to make the theoretical material clearly relevant to things they would use and need to know in a practical sense in their working life. This seemed important to do and it motivated me. However, it didn't take long to learn that many of these "young folk" were working to just get through because the course was a compulsory component of a bigger program.
I learned here what it took to catch the imagination and discovered that only a small number could be hooked while the rest were "C-ing their way through". However there was a willingness and a basic ability to LEARN.
Later, while again teaching, but now in the post secondary system in Canada, I learned that teaching in different countries is like teaching on different planets. There are similarities, but the difference is greater than I could have imagined.
Growing up in UK, attending an all boys school where the "Masters" wore their academic gowns, the boys wore a strictly controlled uniform and because of being a product of the 50's and 60's in England, I had grown up in a relatively stiff, perhaps stuffy, traditional world, where respect was an integral part of both the boy's life and for the most part the Masters' too. While this heaviness had eased in my UK post-secondary experience, that attitude of mind, that way of being, was deeply ingrained in me and those around me. You gave and got respect while earning it.
Teaching in Canada was a shock. There were very touchy/feely situations in place and the students were your "client" and you were there to "serve" them. At the end of each course, the students evaluated the teacher and security and tenure depended on one's popularity in the class. This made properly evaluating the effort and endeavour of the student and equitably grading their work very difficult in some cases. The students bore an air of entitlement, some very much so. They had paid heavily to attend the class and they came into it with a sense of expectation of getting high grades. Marks on the whole it seemed were given far more liberally in that system than the one I had grown up in and experienced myself. People complained bitterly if their mark was lower than 75%, where my experience had been that to achieve 75% was considered a good mark.
What struck me the most when teaching highly complex and mathematical/technical matters to 18 year olds was that they came into the system woefully unprepared to work, ill-prepared to study and largely incapable when it came to literacy. I was shocked. While some may be offended by the comment, I was amazed that some had graduated High School. This was late 1970's to early 1980's. Me daring to make such comments to my cohorts at that time was considered to be in poor taste and rather shocking. Interestingly I note that some post-secondary teachers today are still making loud noises more generally about this in Canada.
Well, I had a job to do, a job I rather enjoyed. I wanted to impart this possibly complex knowledge to the students and knowing my material well, I worked very hard at making it relevant and contextual and exemplified in practical hands-on ways. With relatively small classes, the opportunity to learn was high for the students, but I found all too often that a dumb, angry look took them and no matter how I simplified things and gave them techniques to use to aid the learning process, they struggled and did not exemplify "learning".
I started to question myself. Do I know my material? Am I teaching in a digestible way? I modified and modified to the point that I was starting to dumb-down the content of the material to a point that was unacceptible for the level of coursework. No matter what I did, a too substantial portion of the class was simply not getting it and was exhibiting strong anger towards myself because of it. I was verbally threatened, promised bad reviews if the marks didn't come up. Finally I talked this through with my colleagues. They empathised. They were also aware that the students seemed to be struggling in general. I sat down with my students and tried to ascertain what the blocks to learning were. Some blamed my cultured English accent and said I was a snob. That certainly helped. I was shocked by the ATTITUDE of the students who were struggling. Their sense of entitlement was enormous. They had paid their fees and they expected a passing grade. It was that simple. They had bought their education as a commodity. Probing brought out that they rarely if ever did assigned reading outside of whatever I was prattling on about in class. They never reviewed their incomplete notes or read to xpand their understanding and they never came to me in my office for aid, despite my repeated offering to set up coaching and review.
In the end I understood what they expected. They wanted me to open their cranium, poor in measured amounts of knowledge which would instantly form a part of their reality, close the cranium again and shake gently to ensure an even coating of knowlege on the inside of their empty skulls, rather than shake their world and drive them to explore it.
I was shaken by this experience and certainly not stirred to continue for long in the environment.
Teaching those who pay for their education is no-where near as effective as teaching those who earn their education.
oldlincolnian
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