Earlier today, I had seen an wholesome video of a school teacher who's loved by his pupils due to how he always plays with them in the hallway by giving them high fives and all that, and watching that video kinda took me back to my days in primary school, and I found myself trying to remember if I had any teachers like that during my time.
Unfortunately, I don't think I did because my teachers back in the day spent their time trying to make us fear them rather than love them... Which brings me to today's question, should teachers be feared or respected?
In the past, I've written about how my primary school class teacher would terrorize us back in the day by making our lives a living hell. The man would always look for a reason to hit us with his cane, and it felt like we couldn't do anything about it.
And the reason it felt like that was because most Nigerian parents like it when their kids get disciplined because they believe you must have done something to warrant getting punished by your teachers, and seeing how they're true believers of spare the rod and spoil the child, they most times were always in support of the military training (disguised as normal school activities) that we often got from these teachers.
It got so bad that whenever my class teacher wanted to take a nap, especially during our break time, he would ask some of us to stand guard at the door, acting like a shield to avoid any of the other teachers outside from being able to see him sleeping inside.
But you see, in as much as that man was the devil in human form, that fear made us pay attention to everything he would say in class, especially when he started making Friday's his quiz day. Because if you fail even one question, he would flog you like someone who was caught stealing in the market.
Eventually he got sacked and we celebrated like we had just won the lottery, but then, thinking about it, if he hadn't been that wicked to us (not saying I'm in support of his methods), would we have studied very hard for his quiz on Fridays if we knew that failing meant getting motivational talks from him and no severe consequences?
The way I see it, going all in on just one option might not be the solution, be it fear or respect. I feel a little bit of both would get the work done because you want your students to respect you enough to know that you're a good teacher who genuinely cares about them, but you also want them to have a little bit of that fear in mind to keep them in check when they think about misbehaving because say whatever you want to say, nothing gets the work done like when someone is scared of you, even a little bit.
Because no matter how much we want to twist it, there is always a little fear in everything we do.. You get scared of getting fired if you don't get the work done, your kids get scared of losing their gadget for a week if they misbehave.. All of that is fear, we just choose to look at it differently.
o.o dont think a teacher should be feared but thats just how I feel. Job is to teach if student has issues paying attention or learning then that falls on the parent to discipline their child .-.
But what should the teacher do when the nuisance of that student is affecting every other student and also stopping them from learning too?
usually theres an sop for this which would vary in countries. o.o i think the best could be detention. make them stay after hours in school :D and sit out of the class. worse case they just get a parent call and send home
I think it depends on the students. For obedient students, I don't think there is a need to create fear, but it's unfortunate that all the students in a class are not like that, and so the fear of the teacher should exist for them. Again, as far as I know, good and polite students aren't beaten by teachers easily.
So you do agree that teachers do need to make their students fear them, even if it's a little?
Hmm. A little fear to draw a line between friends and teachers even if they become friendly to us.
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