“Administrators at the Success Academy—a network of high-performing charter schools in the New York area—are standing behind what they call a model teacher, who was caught on camera ripping up homework and berating a first grade student for answering a math problem incorrectly.”
I totally disagree with this kind of behaviour.
Having said that let me offer you a glimpse of what’s going on in the minds of those who accept or even promote it:
“This video depicts a typical day in my elementary school classroom in the late 1970s. All you millennials are a bunch of crybabies. Life is hard and people are shitty. You need a thick skin to get by and it’s fine to start teaching kids that lesson at age 6. “ (PharmaJerk, one of the commenters on Gawker.com)
Can you really blame him? Given the harsh reality that meets the erstwhile students after they leave school?
Shouldn’t we be working at both ends of the problem?
Educate the educators about how to motivate the children to learn without crippling their souls AND educate the employers and their agents (managers) about how treating your work force with due respect would yield way better results than using mockery/belittlement as a motivation tool?
“Dr. McDonald, the N.Y.U. professor, who also sits on the board of the Great Oaks Charter School on the Lower East Side, said that the behavior in the video violated an important principle of schooling.
When is it that any of us should stop learning?
And shouldn’t we also be educating ourselves about the fine difference between spoiling a child and helping him/her into becoming a fully-fledged adult (a ‘man’ in the un-gendered meaning of the word)?