Who And What Is A Teacher? By: Anthony Pellegrino

“Who and what is a teacher?” is an increasingly important issue in discussing the quality of education. Daily teachers are blamed for student learning failure. They are being subjected to testing as to their qualifications for being in the classroom. Today teachers are under the microscope more than ever before. How much do you know who and what a teacher is?

Let’s generalize by stating that a teacher is a person who has all the same aspirations, fears, happiness, disappointments, beliefs and concerns for earning a decent wage as you and I have. His physical appearance, speech, and saunter does not identify him as a professional educator. When sitting next to him unless he tells you his occupation you will never guess it. This is a simplified view of the person called a teacher. So what is the problem concerning teachers that we should concern ourselves with?

All children require and deserve a good education. To that end schools hire people who have graduated from institutions of higher learning labeled teachers. Thus we entrust our children to these professionals and hope that they will impart knowledge or skills to them.

In addition, we surrender to these relatively unknown people many of our parental obligations on ideas such as morality, family, nutrition, personal hygiene, culture and a host of other life skills, We put blind trust and faith in almost total strangers and expect them to love, respect, and care for the children of whom they have never met the parents. Can you love , respect and care for a total stranger’s children as your own? Is this realistic?

Teaching and learning stem from the Latin root “discipline” which implies training that corrects, molds, or perfects mental facilities and moral character. This is an awesome task entrusted to teachers who have little support from parents.

The New York Journal reports that parents spend less than fifteen minutes a week in serious discussion with their children. Fathers spend an average of 17 seconds per day with their children. With so little time spent with their parents is it any wonder that many children are alienated from them? We abdicate our parental fiduciary responsibilities and then denigrate the quality of education our children received at the hands of strangers. Additionally we have stripped away the right from teachers to discipline our recalcitrant children. We engage in moral blindness.

With a disciplined child the teacher doesn’t have much to do and the results are double. The student learns and wins the respect of the teacher. And the teacher wins the respect of the child. With a bad student, the teacher has to work hard and the results are only half of what is to be expected, besides being hated by the student.

Over 2,500 years ago, Confucius, the ancient Chinese philosopher, wrote: ” In this matter of education, the most difficult thing is to establish a respect for the teacher. When the teacher is respected, than people respect what he teaches, and when people respect what he teaches, then they respect learning or scholarship.”

I could sing laudable praises and rant about how teachers are unappreciated. However whatever praises I would sing would fall on deaf ears unless you decide to find out for yourself.

Ask yourself-. Why do I entrust my most precious treasure–my child–to someone who I hardly know? Why do I take so little interest in who is teaching and what is being taught my child? When you begin searching for answers to those questions, you will learn “who and what a teacher is.” And you will no longer worry about your child’s quality of education.