Monday, May 05, 2014

Stats Do Not Make A Good Teacher


Mr. H was considered the best teacher in the math department.  He got the best kids and always got the best results. There was just one problem. Mr. H did not teach math, he taught the kids how to do well on exams.  He taught them how to work backwards from multiple choices.  He told them not to bother remembering exact values of sin 60, tan 30 or any of the other special angles because working with a calculator they would always be able to figure out the exact answer from their decimal calculation.

Lots of kids loved Mr. H for the good grades they got in his class but not all of them were happy.  Many were unhappy about not being taught and challenged.  They planned on pursuing careers in math or engineering and knew they needed knowledge.  Mr. H realized he should have done a better job of teaching when he shared a room with a calculus class and saw the corners he cut were hurting kids he had taught.  Still, he never changed his ways.  His statistics insured him good classes and teaching honor students was all he wanted to do.

1 comment:

LSquared32 said...

That's pretty depressing for an honors teacher. Those are exactly the students who need to be pushed to do it right, not how to cut corners.