Teachers

25-06-2015 03:31PM

I had a lecturer in college who would demean students in a similar way. We were all grown adults, paying handsome tuition fees to have him talk at us for two hours per week (no questions allowed), breaking only for melt-downs anytime he spied a late arrival, or a student opening their laptop, or even caught daydreaming.

If he wasn't screeching at such culprits, he'd try to shame them with ridicule.

He is a heavyweight in his academic field, and nobody in authority had the balls to discipline him. He regularly appears on TV as a wizardy old expert, and I acknolwedge his talent, it's just a shame he's also a magnificent cúnt

wp_rathead · 25-06-2015 03:33PM

Some people who are teachers are great disciplinarians - but dreadful at teaching
Luckily I only had one of them in secondary school

Kev W · 25-06-2015 03:33PM

whisky_galore wrote: »

"Best days of your life"......My hole.

I feel genuinely bad for people who say school was the best years of their lives because in their case it's probably true.

One eyed Jack · 25-06-2015 03:42PM

melissak wrote: »

Op said he/she was dyslexic in all fairness. Did you learn any empathy in school

melissa I have empathy for anyone with learning difficulties, but dyslexia is no excuse for poor spelling nowadays with modern technology. I was diagnosed with severe dyslexia at 7 years of age, it's one of the reasons why I absolutely despise the word 'retard' or calling someone 'retarded' being bandied about this site sometimes, because that's exactly how I was labelled by classmates.

My teachers were nothing short of incredible in school, and I made every effort to try and improve my writing, reading, verbal and comprehension skills. I was lucky enough to have been diagnosed early, unlike some of the posters here whom it seems were only discovered to be dyslexic later in their school years.

That was over 30 years ago, and nowadays teaching is nothing like it was back then. Nowadays teachers are much more aware of cognitive and learning difficulties (I was lucky my mother was my teacher at the time and could tell something wasn't right), and there are many more supports in place for children now than there were back then.

The problem as I see it nowadays isn't teachers, the problem is that far too much leeway and class time is given to students who don't want to learn, as opposed to students who learn differently from other students. It's easy accommodate students who learn differently, it's not so easy accommodate students who simply have no will to learn.

The_Valeyard · 25-06-2015 04:00PM

El Weirdo wrote: »

Whisky.

No. Use the feckin E.

whisky_galore · 25-06-2015 04:01PM

Kev W wrote: »

I feel genuinely bad for people who say school was the best years of their lives because in their case it's probably true.

Usually doled out by an older generation where beatings and administering kicks up the ar*e were commonplace.

The_Valeyard · 25-06-2015 04:03PM

Was just thinking some of the best teachers I had, were the ones who would rip the absolute piss out of us if we were messing. Make sure you didn't do it again.

The Backwards Man · 25-06-2015 04:04PM

The_Valeyard wrote: »

No. Use the feckin E.

Scotch whisky has no E

diusmr8a504cvk · 25-06-2015 04:08PM

syklops wrote: »

+ several million.

It doesnt change OP. No teacher ever accused me of disrupting the class, because I kept my head down in school. Keep your head down in life for an easier life.

And I still get inappropriate comments from managers because they were in a bad mood.

YOU are an example of what is wrong with society, the type of person that gets a job, raises a family and dies.

dont bother · 25-06-2015 04:17PM

Samson Harsh Dungeon wrote: »

YOU are an example of what is wrong with society, the type of person that gets a job, raises a family and dies.

woah. completely agree.

what a waste!!! why not just speak up!?

i have one main rule - never talk bad about people behind their backs.
say it to their ugly faces instead, and that way you get to watch them wince.

biko · 25-06-2015 04:19PM

El Weirdo wrote: »

Whisky.

Are you dyslectic too :P

c68zapdsm5i1ru · 25-06-2015 11:32PM

syklops wrote: »

+ several million.

It doesnt change OP. No teacher ever accused me of disrupting the class, because I kept my head down in school. Keep your head down in life for an easier.

Yes, it's people like you that really make a difference to society:rolleyes:

I presume you're the type of neighbour that sits back and presumes 'someone else' will solve the anti social problems going on in your neighbourhood etc.
Your idea of an 'easier life' is:

'letting someone else fight all my battles while I smugly claim to"'not get involved"'.

Nothing to be proud of. What a pathetic attitude.

jimgoose · 25-06-2015 11:43PM

Lecturers are usually impoverished post-grads with the fear of hell in them between the bank and whoever is supposed to be financing their thesis on "Digital Meeja And Its Influence On Lucy Kennedy's Rubber Tits" threatening to break their legs every other day. The only difference between them and teachers is teachers speak Irish and can't be fired regardless of what calibre of blithering idiot they are. The best thing to do is get it over with and join the real world as soon as possible.

The_Valeyard · 25-06-2015 11:59PM

The Backwards Man wrote: »

Scotch whisky has no E

I am aware of this, and its still wrong.

Meangadh · 26-06-2015 12:04AM

Isabelle Chilly Grits wrote: »

Teachers are like any other group of professionals. There are good ones, bad ones and mediocre ones.

Yes, some go over the top with discipline, invent petty rules for no obvious reason, and think it's okay to make personal remarks to children in front of the class. And that's wrong.

But there are also lots of good teacher who have endless patience and are very committed to what they do.

Saying things like 'most teachers are c*nts' is just ridiculous and childish.

Hear hear. I've encountered crap hairdressers, incompetent waiters, inefficient shopkeepers, douchebag barmen, grumpy doctors etc etc. There are a-holes in every profession. Doesn't mean they're all bad.

Isabelle Chilly Grits wrote: »

Yes, it's people like you that really make a difference to society:rolleyes:

I presume you're the type of neighbour that sits back and presumes 'someone else' will solve the anti social problems going on in your neighbourhood etc.
Your idea of an 'easier life' is:

'letting someone else fight all my battles while I smugly claim to"'not get involved"'.

Nothing to be proud of. What a pathetic attitude.

I disagree with that completely- you're assuming that putting your head down is the same thing as putting your head in the sand. All the way through school and now in my job, I put the head down and try and avoid drama as much as possible. I never wanted to cause trouble in school, and I'm the same in my job now. But, if there was ever a situation where I felt there was an injustice, or that something wasn't quite right, or that I was being accused of something I didn't do, I spoke/speak up. Calmly, cooly and confidently.

You don't have to be the type to ruffle feathers to be able to make changes.

I'm a teacher and far more likely to listen to a student who approaches me if they have an issue with me in that manner than one who shouts at me and abuses me. It's about respect.

I should say also that I have heard those kinds of teachers who treat those students with disrespect (and for the most part it's with male students- as if they should be able to take the abuse and get over it. Awful.) and I cringed every time. Like even the thing of calling young lads by their surname. Fine if their friends want to, but their teachers shouldn't. It's demeaning.

Kids/teenagers need to be treated with authority or they'll walk all over you though. But you can be authoritative without being a prick.

Mr Rhode Island Red · 26-06-2015 12:22AM

95% of them are asses; they're either abusive, bullies, or disinterested in their job.

The other 5% are decent human beings that treat students as equals and are sound.

Meangadh · 26-06-2015 12:30AM

Mr Rhode Island Red wrote: »

95% of them are asses; they're either abusive, bullies, or disinterested in their job.

The other 5% are decent human beings that treat students as equals and are sound.

Nice.

The_Valeyard · 26-06-2015 12:31AM

Mr Rhode Island Red wrote: »

95% of them are asses; they're either abusive, bullies, or disinterested in their job.

The other 5% are decent human beings that treat students as equals and are sound.

No personal bias in this post!!!

Mr Rhode Island Red · 26-06-2015 01:05AM

The_Valeyard wrote: »

No personal bias in this post!!!

Apologies. Let me clarify my post.

From the limited, non-representative sample of teachers that I have had any dealings with during my time in school...

95% of them are asses and the other 5% are decent human beings.

evolving_doors · 02-07-2015 01:51AM

ya lets get'em

Smidge · 02-07-2015 02:19AM

I've had and know some fantastic teachers.
I've also known some downright nasty pieces of work in the teaching profession who should have NEVER been teachers/in the education industry.

gossipgirl10 · 02-07-2015 03:26AM

I definitely think some teachers are just on a power trip. In school I was well behaved and did well in exams was definitely not a trouble maker and I will always remember as an example one teacher asking me to take off my jacket in class. Bear in mind we were in a ****ty portacabin and I was cold. The jacket was a plain one the same colour as the uniform so why the hell did it bother her so much that I had it on. Can you honestly not continue to teach the class because of the sight of me wearing a jacket so much so that you will disrupt your own class to make a big deal about me taking off the jacket... the mind boggles...

I also have a friend who is a teacher of young kids and she was recently saying something about them asking can they go to the bathroom and her making them wait until she told them it was now ok to go to the bathroom. I mean come on if a young child needs to go to the toilet and you are going to let them go anyway why make them wait just so that you can be the one who decides when it's ok to go. She wasn't very happy when myself and some other friends said we thought that was really mean and what if the kid had an accident while waiting for her authority to go. I'm sure there are messers who want to go out to the toilet to doss etc but within reason if a kid asks to go to the toilet I think it's a bit unfair to refuse them.

R.D. aka MR.D · 02-07-2015 04:32AM

gossipgirl10 wrote: »

She wasn't very happy when myself and some other friends said we thought that was really mean and what if the kid had an accident while waiting for her authority to go.

I've met people like that. It's so weird!! Why on earth would you make the kid wait. But in my experience, those teachers learn their lesson when a kid eventually soils itself. I work in ESL so I'm not sure how it would work in an Irish school but it's usually the teacher that has to clean up.

It's really disruptive when a kid goes to the bathroom but I'll be damned if I'm cleaning up pee.

il gatto · 02-07-2015 06:35AM

Teachers spend their working life in a room with 30 kids. I think it has an affect. While everyone else learns how to interact with people when they start working, a teacher spends all their time with people their intellectual and physical inferiors. I've found this often manifests itself as having a strange way of dealing with people. Always wanting to run committees, talking down to people etc.
Tbf, it's normally people who've taught for decades. Whether the training and attitude was different or the years have changed them, I have no idea. Most teachers I know who are 40ish or younger don't seem to be like that.
Your work environment affects you. That's just life. I often find people who work alone, farmers, long distance drivers, various artists etc. sometimes have poor ability to make small talk. People who have hectic jobs often have difficulty relaxing. Spending all day every day (workwise) for years only interacting with adults in the staff room must have some bearing. Some are enthusiastic and diligent, some get bored and stop trying and some get a minor God complex and treat people as stupid and enforce stupid rules with an iron fist.
Most of my teachers were fine, some were fantastic and a few should have been drummed out of the profession (some chance).

YurOK2 · 02-07-2015 08:29AM

My teachers in primary school were good, I feel like I would've done much better in secondary school if I had my primary school teachers teaching me.
When I was in secondary school it just seemed like the teachers were constantly changing and I feel it really affected their teaching abilities. I also found some of my secondary school teachers had a "just teach what's in the book" type of attitude to teaching.
For example, I had the same French teacher from first year right through to leaving cert. This woman used to spend her Summers in France and was a self confessed francophile. She taught us French as if we were living in France, that's the best way I can describe it. We used to spend the whole class speaking in French, even if it was just someone asking to go out to the loo or open a window or something. I finished school 10 years ago and can still speak French relatively well.
On the other hand, I had 4 different Irish teachers during secondary school, only 1 of whom was a good teacher. The teacher I had for my leaving cert used to arrive in on Mondays hungover and she'd still be hungover on Wednesdays. She didn't teach us anything we couldn't just read out of our books. She didn't teach us any conversational Irish, what good is An Triail if you can't have a chat with someone about everyday stuff. I can speak Irish but certainly not as well as I speak French and that's a bit sad.

I also had some crazy teachers. In Accounting, if you didn't balance your profit and loss account correctly you would be forced to stand for the rest of the class with your book on your head, yeah, that was a really good teaching method, it was always the same people it happened to, clearly they needed more actual teaching and less punishment.
And then stupid things like not allowing people leave the class to use the bathroom, not allowing people to take stuff out of their bag during class, if you didn't have everything you needed out, you had to do without it, stupid uniform rules like forcing you to wear your big woolly jumper on a roasting hot day, an English teacher who would make you stand on a chair if you answered a question wrong but wouldn't allow you to pick up your book so you would have to stand on your chair and lean down to try to read from your book.

PARlance · 02-07-2015 08:53AM

You don't balance a Profit & Loss account, that would be the Balance Sheet that needed balancing!
Now, walk around with your phone on your head for the rest of the day.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 02-07-2015 09:20AM

syklops wrote: »

+ several million.

It doesnt change OP. No teacher ever accused me of disrupting the class, because I kept my head down in school. Keep your head down in life for an easier life.

And I still get inappropriate comments from managers because they were in a bad mood.

Sounds incredibly boring - what do you do for fun?

il gatto · 02-07-2015 09:23AM

YurOK2 wrote: »

My teachers in primary school were good, I feel like I would've done much better in secondary school if I had my primary school teachers teaching me.
When I was in secondary school it just seemed like the teachers were constantly changing and I feel it really affected their teaching abilities. I also found some of my secondary school teachers had a "just teach what's in the book" type of attitude to teaching.
For example, I had the same French teacher from first year right through to leaving cert. This woman used to spend her Summers in France and was a self confessed francophile. She taught us French as if we were living in France, that's the best way I can describe it. We used to spend the whole class speaking in French, even if it was just someone asking to go out to the loo or open a window or something. I finished school 10 years ago and can still speak French relatively well.
On the other hand, I had 4 different Irish teachers during secondary school, only 1 of whom was a good teacher. The teacher I had for my leaving cert used to arrive in on Mondays hungover and she'd still be hungover on Wednesdays. She didn't teach us anything we couldn't just read out of our books. She didn't teach us any conversational Irish, what good is An Triail if you can't have a chat with someone about everyday stuff. I can speak Irish but certainly not as well as I speak French and that's a bit sad.

I also had some crazy teachers. In Accounting, if you didn't balance your profit and loss account correctly you would be forced to stand for the rest of the class with your book on your head, yeah, that was a really good teaching method, it was always the same people it happened to, clearly they needed more actual teaching and less punishment.
And then stupid things like not allowing people leave the class to use the bathroom, not allowing people to take stuff out of their bag during class, if you didn't have everything you needed out, you had to do without it, stupid uniform rules like forcing you to wear your big woolly jumper on a roasting hot day, an English teacher who would make you stand on a chair if you answered a question wrong but wouldn't allow you to pick up your book so you would have to stand on your chair and lean down to try to read from your book.

I had 3 irish teachers. One atrocious, one good but horrible and one lovely one who was a native speaker, young and enthusiastic. All failed to teach me irish. Miserably. On a happier note, they failed with almost my entire year.
The problem is that a decision was taken many moons ago that Irish would be taught as English was, as an academic subject, rather than how French and German are taught, as a foreign language. It was pigheadedness. There's no point teaching poetry to people who can't order lunch or ask for directions in a language. I had no idea of tenses (mó choniollocht or whatever it was called) and was reading poetry and novels I didn't understand. When made to read aloud, it was an exercise in phonetics.
The curriculum made it almost impossible to teach Irish.

osarusan · 02-07-2015 10:01AM

il gatto wrote: »

The problem is that a political decision was taken many moons ago that Irish would be taught as English was, as an academic subject, rather than how French and German are taught, as a foreign language. It was pigheadedness. There's no point teaching poetry to people who can't order lunch or ask for directions in a language. I had no idea of tenses (mó choniollocht or whatever it was called) and was reading poetry and novels I didn't understand. When made to read aloud, it was an exercise in phonetics.
The curriculum made it almost impossible to teach Irish.

Spot on.

I just added an important word.

whisky_galore · 02-07-2015 10:21AM

il gatto wrote: »

The curriculum made it almost impossible to teach Irish.

Teachers teaching on autopilot to satisfy a curriculum and pupils learning by rote to pass an exam, all to the ends of a mythical Irish language 'revival', a farcical situation that has existed since the foundation of the state. :rolleyes:

Teachers

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