My Take | Replace newspaper topics with timeless classics in our schools
- The ‘first drafts’ of history are unreliable, defective and of limited value, that’s why we shouldn’t teach current affairs in secondary school using news clippings
Here’s a question that I think people don’t ask enough but really should when they argue about education, especially in protest-torn Hong Kong: what do teachers really want?
A principal, now retired, of a well-known school I used to know once expounded on this particular question. At the time, I thought it was among the most cynical things I had ever heard. Now, though, it actually makes sense to me.
You don’t want super smart or really dumb students in your class, he said, because they mean lots of extra work for you at both extremes. You want them average, with a few above average because you have to give out some of them an A or A- grade, otherwise you look bad.
There have been few details about this teacher. I don’t even know if the person is male or female. But I imagine there must have been a certain passion in the way the teacher approached the general education subjects being taught, passion that most of us assume is needed for a good inspiring teacher.
Perhaps the person aspired to be such a teacher and most likely, would not agree with my old principal.