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I think the major issue here is public versus private. I agree with
you (in another post) that private emails between teachers and
students and teachers and parents should not be subject to public
scrutiny. They should have the same protection as a private phone call
or letter. When it comes to complaining about particular students,
teachers should use common sense as has always been the case. Is it
okay to complain about a particular kid in the faculty lounge? That
depends. If there are only a couple of close friends there, then fine.
If half the faculty is there, then it would be wise to keep your mouth
shut. People everywhere vent about their jobs, and they generally vent
to their spouses, their friends, and their neighbors. I would never
consider railing against my publisher in a personal blog that goes out
to the entire world. My publisher would rightly consider whether or
not to continue working with me if I did that. Similarly, if I had
worked with a particular school district and told everyone on this
list to avoid them, that would be stupid. I would lose business
quickly because no one would trust me. That's very much like a teacher
complaining about a particular student on a blog. All of his or her
students would soon lose trust, and that teacher would be much less
effective. I think it's fine for a school to have a policy forbidding
this.
It should be fine to blog respectfully about general trends among
students regarding their abilities--that's more of a professional
observation than a personal complaint. It's a shame that you know of
examples where teachers are admonished for that. But what I saw in
that thread was teachers saying that if students could disparage their
teachers in a public forum, then teachers should be able to disparage
their students in a public forum. Seems childish and unthinking to me.
Bill
On Feb 17, 2011, at 10:46 PM, John Clement wrote:
I am not necessarily defending that particular teacher, but there is
an
important principle here. Can teachers say things which are true,
but not
necessarily nice? The sort of things that the individual in
question was
saying are exactly the types of things you hear in the teachers
lounge,
except the students are named in the lounge.
While there is a lot of anger, there is also a lot of suppression of
information in the name of being nice and gentle. So the question
is where
you draw the line. If you come out and say that 75% of the students
do not
have proportional reasoning so they have poor reasoning, can that be
construed as being demeaning to students? If you say to students
that they
have to improve their reasoning is that grounds for being called
onto the
carpet? But that is exactly what administrators do. I know from
personal
experience.
If you say publicly that student evaluations or teachers are
worthless,
administrators will object. They can possibly even fire you.
So the question of academic freedom is not academic. To have the
right to
express well founded opinions, you also have to have the right to
spout
drivel. Some politicians do it all the time! Where does the line
between
freedom of speech and the employer's rights lie? Remember that public
schools are government institutions so they must honor the laws and
the
constitution. Private schools have a lot more leeway.
A lot of people are locked into jobs that they wish they could
leave, but
have no idea of what to do as an alternative. So saying they should
leave
teaching may not be reasonable. I know a lot of teachers who look at
students and say to themselves that certain ones are stupid.
Sometimes it
will be express as Joey does not have a lot of wind in their sails.
Actually this comes from the conservative idea that IQ and
intelligence are
fixed and can not be changed, so you can be stupid. Once you
realize that
it is possible to improve thinking, then the equation is turned
around.
Mazur and others in PER have demonstrated that students failed to
learn
because of what we do.
Actually what this teacher in question is doing is just expressing
what a
lot of her colleagues are thinking. So what is really needed is a
paradigm
change on the part of many teachers. Firing this one will merely
make the
opinion go underground and won't change any attitudes.
John M. Clement
Houston, TX
Having now read through all the posts in that thread, I'm amazed at
the number of teachers defending their "right" to complain about kids
in a public forum. You're right. If they are that angry about what's
going on in their classroom, they need to find a different
profession.
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Forum for Physics Educators
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_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l