Respect for students - respect for teachers

Respect is a coin with two sides – I respect you and you respect me. That is how it works’ it’s a mutual recognition of trust and accord.

In the classroom, it is doubly important – again, for you and I – for students and for teachers. However, it is not automatic, as it might once have been. Respect for the headmaster, usually a large man with a booming voice, was often akin to fear of him.

In these more enlightened days, respect is most probably nearer to its true quality. But students often complain of certain things.
They say, for example:-
We are ignored.
We feel judged or rejected.
We are not taken seriously.
We are mocked.
We are stereotyped.
We are not asked for our ideas.
Others make decisions about us without our input.
Others do not try to understand us.
We are not listened to.
Our preferences are not taken seriously.
We are not asked what we think we need.
Others believe they what is best for us.
We are not given reasonable explanations.
We feel controlled.
Our way of doing things is not accepted.
Others believe they know us better than we know ourselves.
http://www.rlfielding.com/respectenglish.htm

Now some of these complaints point to various problems –
a) In the institution
b) In the teacher
c) In the students
d) In the ‘accepted values of the teaching profession’.

It is clear that if such complaints persist, some things must change – (a, b, c, d or all of the above). Change requires several things to happen:-
i) There must be a perception that change is needed.
ii) There must be a willingness to change.
iii) There must be conditions that promote change.
iv) There must be time to change.

Of these sources of the problems, I would say that (d) …the accepted values of the teaching profession – would take the longest to change or be changed.

If teachers are the main source of the problem, then the most likely course is observation of lessons followed by counseling of the teacher.

If students are the source of some of the problems, then there is another problem that is very hard to eradicate – it is this: students’ attitudes to learning, to what is entailed in learning, to their attitude to their teachers, all may have been formed and fossilized prior to their coming up to university.

Studying at university always entails a different set of methods and attitudes to learning, and it is often these differences that students find hardest to take on board.

Teachers at universities should not be seen merely as ‘fonts of all knowledge', like some oracular authority, but rather, should be facilitators, encouraging and indeed facilitating students’ attempts to discover for themselves.

In this digital age, in which access to information is universal, the idea that teachers can know all there is to be known about any particular topic is palpably untrue.

Teachers should guide rather than lead, assist rather than just approve, and discuss rather than arbitrarily mark right or wrong. So teachers need to rethink their roles, and students also need to rethink what they think their teacher is there for.

Once that happens, most of the complaints mentioned above will disappear. Students will have taken control of their own learning and accepted responsibility for it, taking something away from traditional teaching, and adding something to teaching in and for the new millennium.
Robert L. Fielding