The gifted child asks a question he doesn’t know the answer to, but the teacher lacks the meta-cognitive ability to realize that he doesn’t know the answer and before he can stop it his brain just made something up.
Few people are willing to say “I don’t know” when asked a question about a subject they’re supposed to know. To sound smart, one can give a vague answer full of jargon, leaving the details as an exercise. I’ve also seen people complicate things, go off on a tangent, and then point out that they went off on a tangent and resume the lecture as though the question was never asked. Others just say “It’s complicated” and leave it at that. The idea is to give a non-answer that sounds enough like an answer to quash further inquiry.
The point is that most people are lazy and just want to get through the day. The average teacher just wants to get through the lesson as smoothly as possible. The path of least resistance is to intimidate students into a passive role. It’s not just teachers of average intelligence—even world-class scholars have done some extremely lazy things in the classroom.
A student who constantly asks questions or makes a game of trying to trip up the teacher can come to be seen as a problem to be dealt with, depending on the teacher’s disposition.
Right, I agree that this is the outcome. I juat think that no one wakes up in the morning and says “I’m going to skirt my job by intimidating students and BS-ing.
First they don’t know the answer then they quickly rationalize under pressure, then they buy their own BS and honestly believe its an answer, then if they get called out they feel vaguely disrespected, and then the intimidation behavior comes out to defend against the disrespect. It’s not Machiavellian, it’s just brute human instincts reacting to one thing after another. A small child would act the same way on instinct. Later on you ask these people and they’ll quite sincerely say they love being challenged.
I juat think that no one wakes up in the morning and says “I’m going to skirt my job by intimidating students and BS-ing.
I can assure you that some do. There comes a time when you notice that you can bring your laptop to class and assign group work while you surf the Web. No one calls you on it. You don’t get summoned to some office and reprimanded. The students sit there and do as they’re told. Then you realize how little oversight there really is. The students have been conditioned to obey authority, and the authority is YOU. Power corrupts. I ended up deciding I didn’t want to be evil, even if that would mean a lot more work for me.
But I may just be overly cynical. Most teachers I’ve come across seem to care and genuinely want to see their students do well. I would hope that your explanation is more typical than mine.
Few people are willing to say “I don’t know” when asked a question about a subject they’re supposed to know. To sound smart, one can give a vague answer full of jargon, leaving the details as an exercise. I’ve also seen people complicate things, go off on a tangent, and then point out that they went off on a tangent and resume the lecture as though the question was never asked. Others just say “It’s complicated” and leave it at that. The idea is to give a non-answer that sounds enough like an answer to quash further inquiry.
The point is that most people are lazy and just want to get through the day. The average teacher just wants to get through the lesson as smoothly as possible. The path of least resistance is to intimidate students into a passive role. It’s not just teachers of average intelligence—even world-class scholars have done some extremely lazy things in the classroom.
A student who constantly asks questions or makes a game of trying to trip up the teacher can come to be seen as a problem to be dealt with, depending on the teacher’s disposition.
Right, I agree that this is the outcome. I juat think that no one wakes up in the morning and says “I’m going to skirt my job by intimidating students and BS-ing.
First they don’t know the answer then they quickly rationalize under pressure, then they buy their own BS and honestly believe its an answer, then if they get called out they feel vaguely disrespected, and then the intimidation behavior comes out to defend against the disrespect. It’s not Machiavellian, it’s just brute human instincts reacting to one thing after another. A small child would act the same way on instinct. Later on you ask these people and they’ll quite sincerely say they love being challenged.
I can assure you that some do. There comes a time when you notice that you can bring your laptop to class and assign group work while you surf the Web. No one calls you on it. You don’t get summoned to some office and reprimanded. The students sit there and do as they’re told. Then you realize how little oversight there really is. The students have been conditioned to obey authority, and the authority is YOU. Power corrupts. I ended up deciding I didn’t want to be evil, even if that would mean a lot more work for me.
But I may just be overly cynical. Most teachers I’ve come across seem to care and genuinely want to see their students do well. I would hope that your explanation is more typical than mine.