My Dream Educator
I was speaking to 2 of my senior colleagues (not very senior – they were only a year older) and I told them that it was my first time working. And to my surprise, they were shocked.
“Really ar?! You never worked before ar?!”
And one went on to say that I am very lucky to be able to immerse myself in a hugely intellectual and educational environment – without much disruption – and so advance my grades and rise higher in the education system. And the other, after some talk I cannot quite recall, said that he would love to be in such a position, but sadly, he is not.
But he also said this (allow me to paraphrase): “But I do not think people like them (to avoid directly referring to me and so create a misunderstanding) are much smarter what – they may be book-smart but we are street-smart.”
I guess perhaps I am made, destined and called to be in the teaching career, but whatever it is, at my age, I already understand that this education system that we term as “first-world education” is actually not so impressive after all.
My personal stand when it comes to viewing people is that no one is really any more smarter than the other. I mean, did God on purpose make one much smarter than the other just so to place the former on the pedestal and shame the latter on the ground? Well, I don’t even think God made one smarter than the other in the first place.
Humans are judgemental. We seek to find the better. Which applies to sorting out the smarter from the dumber. And so the pioneers came out with a grudgedly indigestible word: examinations. Whether an obselete tribal practice of demanding that a coming-of-age boy carry a sizeable rock and run a circuit to prove his manhood (I still have not got my hands on Great Expectations argh), or a sophisticated imperial assessment in China’s old monarchies, we – or rather, they – chose to use the same ruler to measure the length of every thread.
But what if some threads had knots on them? What if some were coiled up? What if some were just in a jumble? Can you still use the ruler to measure the length? No. And there is no way of getting every thread straight (since this metaphor relates the individual threads to individual men – and therefore it makes no sense to wire every man to be equal in every discipline).
And somehow, we chose to inherit the principle of homogenised standards wholely (with a pittance of advancement) – in the name of fairness, maybe? Continuity? Regular social behaviour of mimicry? I do it because they did it?
The question is simply a big fat why.
Why does our education system grade every single individual based on narrow curricula, with criteria that allow only a selected group to thrive and excel? Those who do well could well be smart I cannot deny the credit endowed unto them, but does that mean those who fail by those standards set by traditionalist, irresponsible, short-sighted and close-minded people (the tone is excessive here, I know) are any less? And do consider the various fields where you can assess 2 individuals of vastly opposing “calibre”.
Sometimes I am really inclined to think that people who do well in the education system fits, and those who don’t just do not. And here comes the saying of the common man: “The exam failed me; I did not fail the exam.”
The economies simply further fuel such “ideals”. I need someone who is good in this, this and that. I devise a test to see if someone is good in this, this and that. And people who are not good in this, this and that, are deemed as crap. The dregs. Waiting to be discarded, or with greater hope, waiting to find a place where his or her potential and abilities can be better harnessed and propelled.
I am by no means saying that the idea of a standardised examination is total cuckoo-nanny baloney. We all need standardisation to tell who’s good and who’s bad (very much for the sake of pragmatism, rationality and anti-quixotism, as far as the idea of “good” and “bad” can be further questioned). But I believe we can use a variety of modes of assessment. We are all cognitively wired differently: the visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learners, just to offer a very simplistic framework. (I shall leave this aspect to curriculum and examination planners.)
And, greater than that, it is my personal belief (and I will stand by it for as long as it sounds credible to me) that no one person is any more or any less worthy than his or her neighbour. That means, I think all educators need to understand that every student is brilliant, in his or her own right.
And that is why I hate, and abhor, and loathe, and despise, and ridicule any educator who says in a definitive tone: “This student is hopeless.”
Who are you to pass such a cruel, unsympathetic and myopic judgement on any one person? (Not to mention the dissonance of that line itself, not just to the ear, but to the heart.) No one is a saint and can say that “I do not judge at all” but I’m sure the very least one can do is to control the thought and the tongue. Iron-clad stratification is not, and never, a right of man.
The hearts of the youthful are fragile and impressionable. An irresponsible educator could kill a person who once had great dreams that could one day change the world. I’m not saying that every student is like that, but can you afford to risk it, and bear the consequences?
And if an educator thinks he or she is, in all honesty, justified in making such statements, I think this person does not and should not deserve to be an educator, for the sake of salvaging the one or two.
We all need someone to believe in us, and no one has a null contribution in its entirety. And thus, I do not think we can afford to deny anyone the opportunity to thrive and fully utilise his or her gifts and competencies.
It deeply saddens me that some are conveniently deemed as bad. When I choose to strongly believe that in actuality they are not. We just stupidly choose to deem them as bad. And I still don’t know why.
Quoting from Marianne Williamson (as far as this is rapidly degenerating into a cliché): “We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.”
