The Legacy Of An Inspirational Teacher Is Felt Throughout The Ages.

On By southwerkIn ethics

Sarah Dunant writes about two teachers that inspired her.

This is her concluding paragraphs. I recommend you read the whole thing. I believe in the importance of teaching and I am a lecturer and story teller. It would be a great compliment to me should one of my students find me inspirational. Well, read.

From the BBC –

Of course, every generation tends to view the past through rose-coloured lenses as they grow older. The importance of teachers in children’s lives is vital whatever moment in history you pick. Both of my daughters have had inspirational teachers, women and men who have cared for them emotionally as well as academically and have taught them as much about life as about learning. Indeed, one could argue that 50 years after feminism, both boys and girls have an even greater need of inspired teaching. Boys to handle the pressure that girls’ success has brought to their own educational journeys, and girls to combat an increasingly vicious culture which equates celebrity with opportunity, and sexual availability with independence. To get the other side of the story, kids need to hear about life from adults they can trust. And for their teenage years at least, the views of their parents often don’t cut the mustard.

The debate about education will, course, never end. How to ensure equality of opportunity? How far testing consolidates knowledge or just destroys curiosity? How to design a curriculum that leaves room for spontaneity and creativity for both pupils and teachers? And how to get away from the tyranny of those damn league tables?

I couldn’t figure out what a league table was,  so I looked it up. From wikipedia –

A league table is a chart or list which compares sports teams, institutions, nations or companies by ranking them in order of ability or achievement. In the United Kingdom, many public-sector industries, including hospitals, compete in league tables. It is complained that the ranking of England’s schools to rigid guidelines that fail to take into account wider social conditions actually makes failing schools even worse. This is because the most involved parents will then avoid such schools, leaving only the children of non-ambitious parents to attend.

3 thoughts on “The Legacy Of An Inspirational Teacher Is Felt Throughout The Ages.”

  1. I couldn’t agree more about “league tables.” Newsweek reported the best high schools in the U.S. in June 2010 and based its selections on how hard school staffs work to challenge students with advanced placement college-level courses and tests. Nowhere in the ranking is the fact that the best high schools are those that serve all of the students not just the very best among them. As a college professor I find it to be disturbing that so many students lack a strong work ethic and motivation to learn for learning sake. How do we measure whether a high school instills these values that are so important to success in college and to create the thirst for lifelong learning? We also should recognize that what a teacher should and does accomplish in the classroom may not be known for years. Perhaps Henry Adams said it best: “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell, where his influence stops.”

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  2. I really wanted to post this as a separate blog entry but I couldn’t figure out a good handle for it. I’m sure I will find something of yours to reblog. This is a strong, well informed comment and I just don’t have a place for it.

    Now that I look at it, if I cut first two sentences off, the ones referring to league tables, I can run it as a further comment on the inspiring teacher post.
    Okay, I’ll do that.
    Jp

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