Wrexasaur wrote:Could this be an argument that good students and good teachers are what is needed to make a good class?
Probably. Though that isn't really a new idea. The problem is figuring out how to improve the quality of both (particularly problematic for students, as it dovetails into the rights of parents)
Wrexasaur wrote:
I would argue that the teacher inevitably has a larger responsibility to the class than any individual student does, but it does make me wonder how in the heck teachers managed to get the proper materials; this may be an argument that can only support the limited amount of education available way back when of course.
Yeah, I think you've hit on it. Teachers didn't necessarily have access to the best materials way back when, but it was also a position of significant prestige due to their rarity (as an extension of the rarity of education). This also impacts student motivation. Back in the day it was quite evident that most people in the nation were uneducated. I'd imagine that a 19th century child knew more than a few illiterate people. As such, education probably seemed more unique, and therefor more important. Contrast that with today where everyone is educated to some degree, and therefore any achievement in the field engenders far less outright pride. Oddly enough, you see this a lot in the upper tiers of the university system. A lot of people there are very intelligent. Intelligent enough to know that for their work to be of resounding significance they have a lot to live up to. This can be motivating, but it can also daunt people into mediocrity.
Wrexasaur wrote:
I feel it is a bit silly to talk about a students responsibility to a teacher in an age where most teachers have have the clue that some students do over current affairs. Appropriate materials, and some of the common place teaching formats are obviously holding back classic education, which, oddly enough can be easily attained with little more than a tutor and access to the internet. If anything I would say that the lack of appropriate education is a sign not of students failing, but the system itself failing to provided necessary means for an average student to attain their goals.
Yeah, that seems to be the current consensus. The extreme rigidity of most curricula can largely be blamed for the lack of motivation. There isn't much point to investigate on your own time when the process is actually dissuaded by the existence of standardized metric of assessment.
Wrexasaur wrote:
The hill is high and I have to climb it, but most of these teachers want nothing more than for me to go climb another, less personally appropriate mountain... rather a cliff-face for some; and I fail to see how the common person would even care about such lofty and rather egocentric "fact" ridden goals.
Yeah, that's the result of placing an over-emphasis on statistical projections.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Nurglitch wrote:How on Earth do you lack education? Are you not connected to the Internet? Do you lack libraries where you live?
Certainly people in the past often had more motivation to care about their writing; if paper is expensive and literacy is rare, then people who can say something to care to get it right the first time.
The inverse of people care less now is that people cared more then. You're both arguing the same point, just emphasizing different parts of it.
