Love them or hate them, they played a significant role in our accademic years from kindergarten to university.
I was very impressed with some of the teachers I came accross. They were so devoted in their subjects and never showed any sign of boredom to what they taught. They deffinitely had interest and looked like hardcore geeks of their subject. They put in so much effort towards teaching and learning new things to be shared with their students. For example, a history teacher will be so into history including emphasizing on how important it is to document history and the whole process of documenting it. Sounds very deep and BORING but they felt it was an important component of the subject.
Puan Siva was my standard 1 teacher whom I dreaded. She was so strict and she used to punish me. Why? I never did my homework and found that education was not important! Never felt that READING was so important but felt the television was a better road to happiness! Yes, I was a very slow learner and took a long time before I could read. I was so scared of her and psychologically I was so worried of going to school.
Then, I changed. I did all my homework and learnt how to read. My parents made time to teach me at home and bring me up to pace. I appreciated their effort and doing homework actually gave me satisfaction in the end. It was that satisfaction of knowing how I can equip myself with knowledge and using it wisely and making full use of my intellectual ability. School became better for me. Thankfully I did very well in school and quite satisfactory in university! Haha!
I still remember the time when I got Pelajar Cemerlang in standard 6 back in primary school. Pn Siva was still teaching there at that time. She came up to me to confirm if the news was true that I got the award and I confirmed it. I noticed she was feeling proud that I got the prize and all her efforts and scolding had paid-off. I could only smile. I look back now and I should have said, "Thank you".
There were some who were just too smart in their field but could not teach. They failed to communicate well with their students and were unsuccesful in relaying their lectures accross to them. Student-teacher engagement is just as important as salesman- customer engagement. If you don't connect, no deal!
There were teachers who used physical punishment on students; slapping, canning, pulling the student's ear. Such punishment does not really educate and inform the student of the error made effectively. It just a form of cosequence to the mistake done by the student. A better solution would be to have a 1 on 1 with that student and talk about it. Understand why did it happen, the source of the problem and how to tackle the students problem in more pro-active way.
Some teachers in secondary schools are idiots! They fail to realize that their student are in a phase of maturing and are experiencing hormonal imabalances that is not the fault of the student but part of the human biological cycle. These are honestly stupid teachers and reflects their level of accademic achievement(not only certification related but level of understanding as a human).
Can teachers be regarded as only human and their acts should be accepted generally? NO. When one stands in front of the class, the focus of authority and attention is on that one person. That would be an ideal scenario where students look up to the teacher as a mentor, an educator or a provider of supreme knowledge. However, the treatment from the teacher is bias and unfair. They judge a certain group of students and pick the best and discard the rest. All students should be treated equally and respectfully in the classroom environment. In Malaysia or from my experience, that drive and determination from a teacher to a weak student has not been reflected unlike those happy ending stories in the movies where the teacher goes all out to see the weak student succeed.
The nature of accademic success should never be judged by the intelligence of the student but by how much effort the student had put in. The reason being psychologically if a student fails, the student sees him or herself as being intelectually inferior. If students make mistakes, educate them wisely and identify what was the root cause and how to circumvent it. Always remember to be positive to students as ones mental and psychological belief plays an important role in seeing how knowledge is absorbed and put to good use. It is always harder to work with negative people rather than positive people because negative people create a barrier on how far they want to go.
Then there were those and this population is growing rapidly of teachers who are just stupid. They do not know head or tail of their fields. There is no drive and determination within them. This is evident among the new graduates from the Maktab Perguruans. Many of them graduate but are of no substance or display any dynamism. They are just out there for the sake of getting a job, the assumption it is an easy job and they are lazy to do anything else. The government is pumping in money to them and introducing so many perks but they do not do their part in developing their teaching career. The term no pain, no gain is beyond their comprehension or to some unheard of.
Where are those teachers who had that love and devotion for classical literature from the early Western era as early as the Greeks? There are a few or none of these new teachers from the Maktab Perguruan who have that appreciation not only towards literature from the Western world but also from our very own local Malaysian literature. The awesome teachers of the 20th century who had such appreciation and interest in their respective fields are dwindling. Perhaps, if robots become educators someday, they could be programmed to express deep liking and understanding for literature or for whatever field.
