When a class has low grades on average who is at fault: the student or the teacher?
Neither, I would place a lot of blame and responsibility on the parents and the community that the child is raised in. While someone may not be financially able to live in a nice neighborhood, I believe it is still their responsibility to nurture the child socially and intellectually. The teacher can only become an enhancement to what is taught at home.
I agree with Malexander, but will add that the teacher can sometimes be at fault since i have known teachers to not show up, not teach the correct curriculum, etc. Of course this is where the parents come in to show interest in 'what is going on' and such groups as the PTA is a big part of this.
Yes, as much as teachers have a working obligation to fulfill, the parents cannot rely on them to be the end all of education. Proper, or should I say structured education is something that should be enforced and reinforced at home, whenever possible. I don't doubt that if a teacher is uninterested, for lack of a better word, in their students, that it will drive grades down. However, hopefully, there is a strong educational base in place that has been started at home, that will buffer such a lapse, and allow the child to recover from such a situation. Then, the parent can also realize that some intervention is required where the teacher needs to be 'motivated' to use proper education techniques with their child. Nobody said being a parent would be easy
I think it's situational. It could be the student, parents, teachers, community, school board, or even state.
If a class as a whole has a low average, then the teacher is not doing something right. Some teachers either don't care or are just completely ignorant of the fact that they aren't doing their job accurately. What may work for one class previously is not necessarily going to work for another class.
Sometimes it's the students fault. It does not matter how great a job a teacher may be doing, or how much parents might be encouraging their child. Some children are lazy and don't want to do it, and no matter what anybody does, that child just will not get up and do anything.
In some occasions, sadly a lot, it comes from the child, but it's not the child's fault. There are a lot of children who have learning disabilities that are overlooked. Certain learning disorders are hard to recognize and diagnose, and a student can be trying, but nobody catches it, and they just do not understand and cannot get it. There's one disorder, I can't think of the name of it right off the top of my head, where a child can learn something one day, and completely forget it the next. They can't help it. Most teachers, especially when they have been teaching since Moses roamed the earth, look at it more as a student just being uncooperative.
In the state of Florida, the overall educational level in certain aspects have gone down. This is because of the FCAT, a standardized test that pretty much controls all of the curriculum. When I've talked to teachers about their opinions, they are pretty much in agreement that the FCAT does more harm than help. Yes, it's good to have standardized testing state wide because it helps establish a basic curriculum for certain grade; however, FCAT is literally running the education system. Teachers are not able to teach a lot of the skills they want to teach because of FCAT. I've had a couple friends who moved out of the state of the Florida back in the day when we were all in public school together, and when they wrote about school they were completely behind everybody.
I think the fault lies with the situation. It can't ever just be pinned on one individual in a general consensus because every situation is different.
In college fault is always the individuals because you have the choice to drop the class when you have an awful teacher. I once had a history teacher in High School try to teach the class with an extremely thick Swedish accent. I could not understand a word he said and had to go to the principle about to change history classes. I have also had a Phsycology teacher teach out of a book 5 years older than the rest of the classes books, and had to drop the class.
When it's on average an entire class, it's the teacher, generally. However, there are certain circumstances where a teacher has a class full of "low achievers" who may have a mix of learning disabilities, disinterested parents, etc. But I would still say that in general, if it's an entire class averaging low scores, it's the teacher.
In my opinion, of course.
Roz
Yeah, you can not say 'it's the student' because it is not one student but the entire class. Still, the student needs to recognize that and try to learn further than what he ie taught in class, or go over the notes more carefully.