A teacher’s attitude towards their students can have a serious affect on students and not always for the good. Recently I was talking to a friend and she was telling me how at the opening of a rural high school, the school library had no books. Why? Because the teachers at that school had decided there wasn’t a lot of point.
Their view was the students of that area wouldn’t use them. The teachers had already made up their mind about what the students were capable of and what they weren’t. They’d dismissed them as being young people who’d end up pregnant or on drugs.
They didn’t even have a public library close by. Again because the same assumptions had been made. Concerned parents and residents banded together to get a public library built.
Sadly this negative attitude is not an isolated case. Another woman in a Western Sydney high school had a daughter in upper high school. The teacher one day told her class he didn’t know whey they bothered turning up each day as none of them were going to pass their final exams.
Attitudes and expectations can have a serious affect. Some people it makes more determined to prove them wrong as it did with my friend’s daughter, but many others in that class accepted the judgment made about them by the teacher and stopped trying, or simply dropped out.
On the other hand, teachers who have a positive attitude and a respect for the young people they teach can have a great impact. Many people have been inspired by a teacher with a passion for their subject and a healthy respect for their students that believes and convinces them they are capable of great things.
The attitudes of parents in education are equally as important. Tell a child they are stupid often enough and they will end up believing you. I had a friend like that years ago. Her father always told her she was stupid. She grew up believing she couldn’t do anything useful because she was stupid. What a terrible burden to place on a child.
On the other hand tell a child there is nothing they can’t do or aspire to and it’s likely they’ll believe that too. But more about that next time.
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