Comment by ninetyninenine 3 days ago
> he was angry, he marked it wrong.
That’s grounds for termination to me. Seriously. I would put this man out of a job and endanger the livelihood of him and his family for this kind of shit.
If you like watching right-wing educational propaganda, sure.
So wait, so you've decided a film by the director of An Inconvenient Truth, that was praised by everybody from Bill Gates to Oprah, has won awards and gotten a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes is "right wing propaganda"?
You may want to recalibrate you sense of where the center is.
These days, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_and_Deliver would be considered right wing propaganda.
It's based on the true story of a mathematics teacher in east L.A.
It wasn't received as right-wing propaganda at the time. Endorsed by Bill Gates and others less-informed to education research with leanings towards the left.
But it is definitely anti-education and proposes solutions that aren't justified, like the right-wing-aligned push for chartered schools (which tend to be religious in nature, hence the wholesale gobbling for it by the rightwing).
Stanford studies in 2009 & 2013 put the fork in superior performance claims -- no better and no worse than public schools on average. So the charter school miracle is really just cherrypicking with a side of encouraging (or, if malicious, enforcing) segregation (since poorer people both tend to be minorities and tend to not have capacity/time to jump through lottery hoops). With careful planning and policy structure, perhaps good charter schools could overcome their entrance bias (RIP college entrance for either economic class or historically disparaged category), but good luck getting anything like that from the political minds that brought you DOGE and the nonsensical trade war.
Agreed. Like this is fraud level bs that’s happening and people are voting me down.
I think it’s because this kind of stuff is common. People have done fraudulent stuff and they don’t agree it’s a fireable offense. Understandable. I still would endanger someone’s livelihood for this. Poor performance I would think twice and go through all measures possible to improve performance including putting them in a position where they can excel. Poor performance does not justify endangering the livelihood of a person or their family but this fraudulent bs of being angry and marking something wrong. That’s just malice.
It’s one question on a school exam, friend…
And at least the guy had the honesty to admit his irrationality when called on it. That, to me, reads more like coming to terms with his error in an edge case than it does a systematic campaign of maliciously frauding on the student
You seem very angry yourself, and willing to let that anger guide you to harming someone. Are you so different from that teacher? In fact, you might be worse, while he only gave a grade (one of many surely, likely to have no long term impact on life prospects or survival), you would have this man made homeless? Don't be so quick to assume a teacher (at least in the us) has been able to accrue sufficient savings to endure a ruined livelihood. Sounds very, very extreme to me. Might there be a more charitable interpretation of the words, might there be information that we don't have that would, say, humanize the human being you'd like to ruin? Maybe we could take the time to understand these impulses in ourselves and be the example we want rather than reflecting the pain we hate to ever increasing magnitudes.
I would. Small things like this add up to overall corruption.
Also im not killing him. Just firing him. Find a new job and don’t do shit like that again.
Side note: the parent's entire argument boils down to this:
"Look at how hurt the teacher would be by being fired, you are a bad person for suggesting that.
Setting aside the Ad-Hominems¹ like "Are you better than the teacher"?, this is a textbook example of the logical fallacy known as Appeal to Emotion².
Which is delightfully ironic given the numerous people accusing you of being overly emotional in the point you're making that a teacher who willfully breached trust and abused their authority over children shouldn't have such authority.
This says much more about the people criticizing you than they realize.
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>You seem very angry yourself
To whom? Not to me. Please don't try to assert you know what someone else is feeling.
What they wrote wasn't angry.
>and willing to let that anger guide you to harming someone.
It's not anger that's guiding the call to fire the teacher that willfully mis-grades a correct answer because "they got mad" at the student for understanding the material at above-average level.
It's the compassion for their students.
>Are you so different from that teacher?
Yes. The teacher is given authority over children, and we trust them to be fair and just in their job.
They have violated the trust and abused the authority.
And what got them mad was the student doing what we expect the students to do very well — they learned.
The teacher got mad at their student for learning, and abused the student in retaliation.
The retaliation affected someone who didn't have a choice about being in that position, and who was required to be in that class (by law, among other things), and the consequences of bad grades have lifelong effects.
Meanwhile, the commentor you're responding to observed that the teacher has failed our trust and abused the authority, and deemed such harm to students unacceptable to an extent that warrants revoking this person privilege to teach.
Nobody here has authority over the teacher, nobody trusts us to treat the teacher fairly; the teacher is free to work elsewhere; and we're being displeased about the teacher not merely doing his job badly, but harming his students.
To think these two situations are comparable is a failure of critical thinking, as well as empathy.
>In fact, you might be worse, while he only gave a grade (one of many surely, likely to have no long term impact on life prospects or survival), you would have this man made homeless?
Nobody said anything about making the teacher homeless.
His need of having a home doesn't grant him a right to hurt children.
If you're not happy about firing potentially leading to homelessness, you may advocate for things like housing guarantees, income guarantees, and so on.
The Soviet Union, where that was the case, had its merits after all. Saying this without sarcasm, as someone born in the USSR.
But you appear to be talking in bad faith here (or, at least, without thinking it through), because by your logic, one shouldn't say that anyone should be fired for doing a bad job, by equating firing to homelessness (something specific to the US, BTW).
People are called to be fired (and are fired) for much lesser offenses than willfully hurting children in retaliation.
Most US states are at-will employment states, where anyone can be fired for nearly any reason (the few exceptions are well known).
In light of that, your argument rings hollow.
>Don't be so quick to assume a teacher (at least in the us) has been able to accrue sufficient savings to endure a ruined livelihood.
As someone who's left academia, and has many friends teaching in college or high school: that teacher will likely be better off financially doing anything else anyway.
That said, the system where we pay shit to shitty teachers and justify harm to children by shit pay is shitty all around.
See, the real issue with your rhetoric is that you completely ignore what the teacher has done.
Which is, again, abusing the trust and authority over children (we trust grading to be fair, and a lot depends on it), willfully, in retaliation, for the student having learned a lot.
Whatever the offense was, though, your argument can be repeated verbatim, without any changes, and will be still consistent.
Replace mis-grading with sexual assault, and you can still ask all the same questions you did.
Think about that for a minute. Try it.
...Don't be so quick to assume a teacher (at least in the us) has been able to accrue sufficient savings to endure a ruined livelihood. Sounds very, very extreme to me....
>Might there be a more charitable interpretation of the words, might there be information that we don't have that would, say, humanize the human being you'd like to ruin?
Gee, I must've missed that line in the US Constitution where we're all guaranteed the right to pursuit of happiness, teaching high school classes, and harming students entrusted to our authority by willfully mis-grading them.
Unironically — wouldn't anyone please think of the children?
The teacher's potentially poor finances don't equate to having a right to abuse trust and authority over children.
He has abused that trust in a way that leaves very little hope for him changing his ways (if you think that teacher will ever be happy to see that his student learned more than the teacher knew, I have a bridge to sell to you).
Consequently, there's no reason to believe the teacher should continue having the privilege to have authority over children.
>Maybe we could take the time to understand these impulses in ourselves and be the example we want rather than reflecting the pain we hate to ever increasing magnitudes.
Maybe we could avoid writing empty platitudes and try understanding the points we're responding to.
By "we", I mean "you" (just as you did).
I, for one, have already taught my fair share of mathematics classes over my years in academia, and (imagine it!) not even once I felt the impulse to mis-grade a student for any reason — much less so for being exceptionally good.
The very few times I've had the pleasure to teach someone who I felt was better than I was in the subject that I was teaching, I felt genuinely happy to have such luck.
So I'm all set on being the example.
Now, your turn.
Try to understand what I'm saying here before responding (or otherwise emotionally reacting).
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TL;DR: abuse of authority over children warrants revoking the privilege to have such authority.
Simple as.
Is it rage?
If he murdered someone I would put him in jail and that will harm his family too.
There is a fine line between justice and compassion and if you never cross the line to enforce justice then you have corruption because nothing can be enforced because inevitably all enforcement leads to harm.
I want to apologize on behalf of the person whom you're responding to, as they misunderstood your point to an extent that makes it seem very unlikely that they'll be able to contribute to the discussion of where to draw that line.
To answer your question, let's note that holding a job in general — more so, a job which involves authority and power, and doubly so when it's over children — isn't a right, but a special privilege, which is given under certain assumptions, one of which is that the children entrusted into the instructors' power are to be treated fairly.
Consider that children's livelihoods depend on this assumption when they grow up, as grades affect which college they get into, which scholarships they get, which career they get to follow, how much money they make.
The teacher has violated this fundamental assumption; consequently, his teaching privileges must be revoked.
The damage to his family is out of scope; employment isn't a right, so starting a family is a risk that people take willfully.
Further, the teacher might be better off doing something that doesn't drive him mad. It's more healthy.
There's no mercy or compassion in keeping someone where they are miserable.
Side note: I changed my graduate advisor on my 5th year of graduate school, after trying for 3 years under someone who simply "didn't have the heart" to kick me out when it should've been clear we're not a fit for each other — something they had the experience to see, and I did not.
All "giving me a chance" for 3 years did was take 3 years out of my life, drag me into deep depression, and push me to almost dropping out of the graduate program.
After I started working with another advisor, I graduated in two years, writing a thesis we both were happy with (and getting a couple of publications out of it). I didn't stay in academia, but it was an option (I'm not tough enough for it, frankly, but that's a whole another conversation).
My point is: tolerating, out of compassion, an instructor who gets mad because their student understands the material very well may be similar to the compassion my first advisor had for me — which did more harm than anything else.
Being pushed out of a job one is miserable at, but can't quit on their own for whatever reason is, too, an act of compassion.
And I posit that this is what this "teacher" needs (aside from therapy).
I don't see this teacher ever being happy or excited to see a student that is so interested in the subject they teach that they understood something better than the teacher did.
But that's a prerequisite for being a teacher. Merely tolerating your students' excellence isn't enough — it's something, hopefully, a teacher should strive for.
We hope that a child taking a physics class at least has a chance of becoming a great physicist, i.e. a better physicist than their physics teacher.
But the chances of that are diminishing greatly if their physics teacher doesn't wish the same — i.e. doesn't hope that their students would shine brighter than they did.
And if that possibility drives them mad... to an extent where they'll willfully wrong the student in retribution...
...I can't imagine what it would take for them to do a 180 turn and end up being happy the next time they find themselves in this scenario.
Firing them seems like a win-win for everyone.
>There's a certain irony in your outrage at his failure to control his emotions, even as your own rage leads you to dream of hurting his family.
Wow, what bad take.
Are you willfully misinterpreting the parent commenter, or would you need some help understanding it?
Assuming it's the latter, here it is.
First, there's no outrage or rage. That's something you ascribe to the parent comment, and that's unwarranted.
Second, there's no dreaming of hurting [the teacher's] family.
The message was: it is important that this person should be relieved of teaching duties, with the full understanding of the gravity of such an action, as being fired from one's job in the US puts the livelihood of the person being fired at risk.
See, the person you're responding to is empathetic, because they consider the impact of what they wish — the teacher being fired — on the teacher as well as others (the teacher's family), and don't take wishing something like that lightly.
Most people would stop at "bad job, fire him", without contemplating what it means for that person.
The parent commentor did, and is saying that, as grave as the consequences are for the teacher (and, potentially, his family, if the teacher is the sole breadwinner), it is still necessary to remove them from teaching because harm to children and violating the trust we put in instructors is unacceptable, and the damage they do in their position is far greater than the damage that would be done by firing them.
This is a compassionate and composed consideration.
Oh, and there'd be no irony about the parent's response even if they were raging, as they were not talking about the teacher's failure to control their emotions.
The issue is hurting children, which isn't something the parent commentor is decidedly NOT doing.
Hope this helps.
>That’s grounds for termination to me. Seriously. I would put this man out of a job and endanger the livelihood of him and his family for this kind of shit.
Agreeing with you as a former instructor (who left academia for greener fields after completing the PhD).
I've had people cry on me in office hours because they come out with — quite literally — PTSD from instructors like the one we're discussing.
It's nothing short of psychological abuse of children, and it leaves lifelong damage.
It's worse than no instruction at all. I've had to have college kids unlearn things before I could teach them.
We've got to draw a line somewhere. I draw the line at actively traumatizing children.
That person should not be allowed to teach, period. We'd do both their students as well as themselves a huge favor by removing them from teaching.
By all indications, they'd be a happier person doing something else, where they wouldn't be driven "mad" by seeing that they've done a good job — which, for a teacher, means their students being proficient in the subject they teach.
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TL;DR: this teacher was driven "mad" by seeing that he's done a good job, and one of his students was really good in the subject.
Spare them from this pain.
And if you CAN'T terminate because of admitted emotional grading, the system is too tightly captured by outside interests to the detriment of the client: the student and society.
A teacher is a professional entrusted with the most important responsibility society can offer: training and educating the next generation. It must adhere to the highest of professional standards and expectations.
That we don't pay enough to require that without reserve is a statement on our societal priorities, and disconnected from the expectations that should hold.
EDIT: clarification/word choice