Imagine for a moment that you have been suffering for several days with a fever of 105°, coughing, and complaining of chest pains. You finally muster up the strength to make an appointment to see a doctor and drive yourself to his office. Once the doctor walks into the examining room to consult with you, he immediately begins to berate you. "Where are all of these sick people coming from!" he yells, slamming his clipboard onto the counter. "I didn't go to Medical school and spend all of those years in residency only to be inundated by all of these sick people. They can't pay me enough to keep doing this!" And with that, he walks out, storms into his office, and slams the door behind him, leaving you and the nurses silent and bewildered.
Of course, this scenario is absurd. Doctors don't get angry with their sick patients for being sick, because it's their job to make them well. Indeed, they went to medical school to find cures for diseases and to improve their patients' quality of life. In fact, sick patients keep them in business. There's capital in disease (but that's another discussion).
So if we (teachers) know this to be a kind of a priori truth about doctors, why then do we consider it an affront to our profession when those blasted high schools keep sending us unprepared, underprepared, and miseducated students? If the job of the doctor is to heal his patients, then the job of the teacher is to teach her students. Yes, the raw material sucks sometimes. But it's easy to teach bright, insightful, intellectually fit students. However, it is phenomenal to create bright, insightful, intellectually fit students.
This is a very interesting beginning. You're very right. Doctors works with what they have before them; they don't berate their patient’s past doctor or the patient themselves when they come to their office, because they haven’t done everything they could. However, the doctor could question, why haven’t they done all they could, it is their health. And why haven’t their past doctors given them the time and care to educate them properly? Considering the inadequacy of a doctor and their lack of care and time, is why many people get second opinions. However, if one who doesn’t have the proper tools or resources, while they may want a second opinion—it may not be available to them.
ReplyDeleteSo, we can say here, like we can say almost everywhere, the problem of education, like that of healthcare, has many elements: the teachers, the school district, the devotion and desire of the students, the environment, the enthusiasm of the teachers, etc. However, one can say, like you said, good teachers, like good doctors, don’t admonish their students or patients because of the past. They look to the future and try to help them understand where they are now, and how they may reach: intellectually and emotionally, where want to or need to be.
Thank you for your insightful comments.
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