Teaching or Testing?

When we enter any educational institution, what do we see as our goal? I’m not taking kindergarden or even school into account, since we’re not old enough to see further than our noses when we enter them, but, let’s say, college, or a university. While drifting in a sea of vague ideas of getting a degree and, therefore, a better job later on, we often forget the main reason: to learn.

Naturally, the process is complicated – it’s not like you can get a knowledge injection and become clever all of a sudden. It takes time and effort. And great teachers. The problem is, these days, they are more and more difficult to come by. What we mainly see are people who are there to test you - and nothing more.

Those latter ones spend most of their time praising star students who don’t seem to have any problem digesting new information for one simple reason: it’s not new to them. They already knew that. It doesn’t matter, why – they were more interested in the subject earlier on, they have parents who work in this sphere, etc. The point is: they didn’t acquire their knowledge at this particular institution. They got it somewhere else, thanks to someone else’s teaching talent.

Others, who weren’t so lucky, get treated as if they were horribly lazy – it’s constantly pointed o

ut to them that they should work harder to achieve the same results as their higher-achieving colleagues. Would that it were true, but that hard work doesn’t give them anything, because they are working according to YOUR system, while the star students got the same knowledge, using SOMEBODY ELSE’s system, one that might be much more effective than yours.

So, what’s the point of slaving under the system that doesn’t work? And why does it seem like you have to know everything when you enter a university in order to get any praise at all? And, furthermore, what’s the point of entering the said university, if you already KNOW ALL THAT STUFF? Seriously? If we aren’t allowed to make mistakes and NOT know t

hings, then why do we need you?

We don’t. We could just self-educate ourselves at home without being humiliated every time we come to class, and pass our exams at the end of the given period of time. No teachers required. Although, honestly, I wouldn’t call them teachers, because that profession is noble, and I know a few wonderful representatives who carry the title proudly. The ones I’m mad at should be called ‘testers’, because testing other people’s progress is all they do.

And that’s infuriating, because their snobbish attitude and lack of genuine knowledge can actually ruin lives. Because of them, many students give up working on their talents, afraid that they may not be gifted enough to succeed. It’s terrible, and it’s one of the reasons why I will never teach. You HAVE to have a gift for that. You need to feel in in your gut that what you really love to do is HELP PEOPLE LEARN. Not assess the knowledge they already have, but give them something new to know.

If you’re a teacher, but you don’t feel that urge in your every bone…just stop. Don’t ruin lives.