Are teachers getting worse these days.

When I was at school, some teachers were really strict others kinder, but none were really really I would say bad or unprofessional.

But now I see lots of my friends telling me that their children are getting into many many rows with teachers and rather then tell them off the parent is supporting them and the reason is because the teacher has more than been a bully, but is not marking work, is being lazy in class and saying "teach yourself" and use the book to learn and being plain out lazy.

The students want to learn and be educated but the teachers seem to be more concerned with getting through the day and collecting their pay checks.

They don't even seem to be enjoying teaching and you wonder why they are there and the purpose of their employment.

This thread is not to justify or support arguments with teachers, many are excellent and doing a great job, and others getting by. We can complain and about those who are poor and speak to a mentor or principal etc.

But sometimes things don't change and the students have got so frustrated that they just want to learn and so they go to talk to the teacher to complain direct and then it becomes an argument. Especially if they tell you off and it goes like this all the time.

Consider this hypothetical situation: :

"Stop messing around and do your work"

"We don't know what to do you did not tell us"

"Use the book and answer the questions"

"Why don't you teach us instead?"

"just shut up and do your work"

"no I wont shut up your a really bad teacher"

"how dare you get out of my class"

"no I wont leave, you should leave you cant teach"

"how dare you"

"for the last 5 weeks every lesson you sit and the front doing emails and ask ask to work from books and we don't learn anything"

"But you have work to do"

"we are not learning anything, but if we are quiet you don't mind as you can do your work, but if we are loud you say shut up".

"okay, settle down and get on with it"

If someone spoke like that to a teacher that would be disrespectful, but the teacher did say shut up and that is rude. Also the teacher may have backed down because they knew the student was right they were not doing their job either and just sat at the front surfing the internet unable to teach. So if the student was sent out, the principal would ask why and the student would tell them why and the teacher would be investigated. so the teacher let the student off and the student just goes back to mucking around.

Now while this may be scenario from a friend of my sister abut something she heard from a colleague of hers. Her nephew's friend told us about a parents child friend that knew someone who was at a school where this happened when they were visiting a niece.

Do you get into arguments with your teachers?

Back when I was school.....this never happened. Teachers always cared about their students well being and whatnot. I was like a teachers pet in a way, I was the most fav person to them. Because of how hard working I was, which made them so happy. At times I would even go out with them somewhere to a nice park or something. '-'

I've heard so much now of what has happened, years have gone by and teachers have become brutal cold towards their students. They don't stop bullies and such, and don't even care at all for the students feelings. So many young people are having it tough right about now. As the teachers do not help the situation and make things worse. I say there are only some kind teachers left. anyway....they would make things hard personal wise. Those people don't realize that a lot of young people, and children try to look forward to school. As at their home things are so ruff with them in a way. All they want is comfort and for someone, or their friends to understand their problems and such. Today's modern school times, I fear for many young people being so unhappy.....

There are bad teachers, sure, but far more often than not, it seems like teachers are truly trying to help out.

I had only one teacher that would check his email and spend the entire class in headphones, watching youtube videos, and that was in middle school.

95% of the teachers I've had were truly decent and helpful people who could have chosen a different profession for more pay, but decided instead to dedicate their lives to teaching.

I wouldn't say that teachers are any different today than in the past. It's just that when a teacher does something wrong today, it's heavily publicized by the media. Because of this, schools are much more receptive of complaints, giving more power to parents (meaning students as well).

I've seen a really good teacher get the boot, because classmates would complain to their parents about how hard the class was. At the same time, they'd go on Twitter and talk about how they never attempted any of the assignments or studied. That's a real problem.

EideticMemory : I really really like you reply and find it very interesting. I have seen a good teacher get the boot because of the student voice and the students laughing that they never worked to themselves, which the board of education ignored when evidence was presented as such as they said if the class had been run better then the students would not be behaving like this. But the same students were behaving like that in all the classes, but the other teacher never stood up for her or said anything as they did not want to be brought into the spotlight and identify that they also had problems. They just prayed that if all the attention was on one teacher it would not be on them. But they got rid of her all the same.

I don't really see that here at all. Pretty much every teacher I ever had was nice and the only "Bad" ones were the ones who would forget things, such as leaving work at home and forgeting to grade stuff. That's really the worst that would ever happen. Heck, I used to skip class to go to another teachers room and play with her dog. The teacher with the dog would be fine and the regular teacher would give me all the work.

This actually happens quite a lot in my school. Most of the teachers use the book as an escape from teaching. These people however shouldn't be confused with teachers who use the book as a guide of what to teach.

There was a situation like this in one of my classes last year. It was US History and out teacher was the teacher that would cassualy curse and everyone liked him. He was a very good teacher though, we didn't really use the book at all because he knew exactly what he was talking about and everything was really easy to remember so we didn't need the book at all. But one day his casual use of words (this word starts with an "f" and has to do with gay people) got him in trouble. Nobody even cared that he used the word, everybody was laughing it was really just a joke. My school is mostly white and hispanic so this sort of thing is kind of not really a big deal. Even the year before someone was out to get him fired, so this time somebody told the principle about what had happened and he ended up getting fired. So now we have this sub for 2 classes and we literally just talked the entire class, I'll admit it was fun though lol. But then when we got our new teacher who has to be the worst teacher ever. She is a great and nice person, but she has no idea how to teach a class. She tells us just to use the book and she gives us lots of worksheets that just wear everybody out and nobody felt like doing them after a while because there were so many. So eventually everybody just kind of stops doing the worksheets and book work and stuff and a lot of people's grades go dow A LOT. So I'm out of school already for a bout 2 weeks. When we got our finals the subject was presidents and the whole year we talked about the presidents in the time periods we learned about, but if you were to count them out it would end up being about 10 presidents we learned about (and didn't even learn that much about). So I got a D on my final which sucks. The only reason I know I got a D is because she let us look at the grades before we left that year. The worst part about it all is that we have this "program" that it's basically an online gradebook so you put in the grades into there and you can see your grade at home on the website and stuff. This isn't just a viewer though, this literally controls our grades and they take the grades from this program and it's out grade. So its been about 2 weeks now and this teacher still hasn't put out final exam grades in!!!! It gets really frusterating sometimes but next year I don't have her as a teacher and I wish good luck to the peopel that do have her lol.

Wow that was long...

So....in a way. There are some good schools out there and there are not so good schools out there. It depends on which one you go to and how you see yourself to fit in. Either good or bad in a way sadly....you just have to find the right school you want to be so there isn't no problems. But that would not be the case as there are always problems going around in some certain schools.

Eniitan : Yes, certain schools seems to be plagued by problems. But I do find even in good schools there are some apples which are not as ripe or fresh as the others and this creates a lot of drag in those classes. But I don't think it is the teachers fault often they themselves are put in an impossible position working long hours with little job security and subject to the possibility of criticisms in the form of student voice and observations.

Totts : I agree with that. My school is a pretty good school where I live, one of the best. But only some of the teachers aren't teaching well, and those classes are especially hard to do well in.

jack3604 : That's basically it you see. That is why some or most others do have a hard time in their school, because it isn't so good. As either students misbehave or teachers wouldn't care at all for them. For me I was able to go to an ok school. But in a way was still bullied there. It can be cruel at times. While also you can enjoy yourself in a way, its like a mix of good and bad in there....

I had a mix of good and bad teachers throughout my school years. Some were incredibly helpful and kind and you really got the sense that they genuinely enjoyed teaching. One in particular went out of her way to help her students, not just in school but out of school as well.

I did have one absolutely horrible teacher who told me I should kill myself. She's retired now, so thankfully my brother and sister's (who go to the same school I did) don't have her. She was very vague in her classes and often refused to help explain things further. 

My youngest sister has been having some difficulties with a particular teacher as well. Other teachers actually approached my sister when they heard she would be in her class and warned her. I've met this women and honestly, I don't see why she's a teacher to begin with. She stated she hates kids and is always complaining. Her idea of teaching is to tell kids to read a worksheet and fill it out without giving them any help or instruction, then losing her students work and threatening to fail them.

Over the years, at least in my area, nothing really has seemed to change. The good teachers struggle to keep students focused and interested in school, but a lot of the times, the bad teachers really get under the students skin and they end dropping out or hardly attending class.. 

I've had some bad teachers over the year, both in public school times and even college!

Ins first grade, I had a teacher who just did not like boys or tomboyish girls. She did not state this outright, she just made it evident when controlling her class. The girly girls that had pretty hair would be treated like princesses, barely punished when they did something wrong ("Now go think about what you done!"), while the guys or tomboyish girls would receive harsher punishments (usually chewed out in front of everyone).

There was one incident that still pisses me off to this day. We had a coat rack in the room that couldn't fit everyone's stuff very well, so coats and book bags would often spill out or fall to the floor. My parents were concerned because my new coat was getting stepped on and really dirty so they spoke to the teacher, who said she'd handle it.

She accomplished this by in the middle of a lesson, demanding to know who was stepping on my coat. There really wasn't any one person's fault in this, everyone ended up stepping on each others' stuff at some point, either by accident or apathy to other people's stuff. I had a hard time speaking with her, because I wasn't used to being put on the spot, but managed to say, "Well... everyone..." She then went around asking everyone if they did, which of course, said no. The teacher then said, "See? They said they didn't, so who did?" I think I meekly said "everyone" again, but she dismissed it and insisted that I must have been the one who stepped on my own coat. I kept denying it but she said it was the only logical explanation, which I ended up giving in. She made a call to my parents, saying I confessed to it.

Later, my dad asked me what happened, and I told him everything, how she wouldn't believe me and that everyone just happens to step on each others coat, so there was no one person. He believed me, as did mom when he told her. They ended up getting me a new coat, which I just felt bad about.

This was a teacher I couldn't argue with really, as I had not quite found my voice yet. I don't recall getting into a HUGE argument with a teacher, as I didn't like confrontation, but I did have a minor rant on one in high school. She had used the phrase, "You can't have your cake and eat it too!" on me about something, and I just flipped out. "THEN WHY HAVE THE DAMN CAKE?!"

I didn't get in trouble for that, nor was the teacher a bad one, but I just find that phrase asinine.

There are other awful teachers I've had but none as memorable as the one above. That one I believe cause me some anger issues.

Well in 7th grade I had this one teacher. He taught Social Studies. He was an absolutely awful teacher. I didn't learn a single thing from him all year. All he did was make fun of kids and promote the burger restaurant that he owns. He used to kick my friend Ryan out of his class every day. Granted Ryan was a bit of an ass back then, but he wasn't even that bad. Ryan probably spent a total of 15 minutes in that class all year. He would get kicked out and sent to the hallway, but once he got kicked out her would go to the other Social Studies teacher's class and sit in there instead. He did so much better in that class then the rest of us and he was never even in the room!

My friend Paul also got into a political debate with a substitute teacher. My friend is a conservative, and the teacher is a liberal. I would have joined in if I was there, but sadly I wasn't. Anyway, my teacher started getting annoying with Paul (because he was winning), so he sent him to the office for "disrupting the class".

I'm kind of split on this. While I have some great teachers at my school I also have some really bad ones. My English teacher for example lowered my grade in English and I asked her why she said because I missed some movie they were watching (which was the matrix by the way) and apparently she can just lower my grade because of this.

That's not even considering the fact that she's worse at English then me yes you heard me right. I'm not just saying that either she is pretty bad at English for supposedly being an English teacher (and her pronunciation is horrid).

Not to mention that it looks like I'm getting a new math teacher this year (my old math teacher was great) who had also pretty much called my mom dumb for not giving me "the correct information" as I'm an atheist and apparently a world without god can't exist (what's even worse is that she's supposedly a science teacher).

However it's not all bad I have some great teachers too who actually care about what their teaching I just wish I had the bad teachers in other subjects as most of them I have in my best subjects which means it's probably going to result in them lowering my grade...

Yeah hopefully I'll get better teachers in those subjects once I finish 9th grade.

I think there are some teachers who are good, but some are just terrible. So just go on a power trip, but then there are some who actually try to help their students.

There are some teachers that take the rules to far. I had one teacher who didn't believe in the "Under God" part of the Pledge of Allegiance. I said Under God one time in Elementary school, and she convinced the principal to suspend me fore 3 days for trying to force religion on people when I am agnostic.

Totts : oh, yeah. i had this horrible teacher, (i'm home-schooled now) who was nice at the beginning of the school year, but turned really mean later on. (my classmates agreed.)

I would have these classes where we would have a pointless argument between the classmate that couldn't care less for his graduation, and the teacher that just is doing his or her job. More often than not, the student has a "rebel" persona that just doesn't fit with anything normal people would do.

There were a lot of students who got into arguments with me, but it wasn't for any of the reasons you listed, Totts. Usually, kids would do something wrong and not want to take responsibility for it.  Although I'm certain there are many cases like what you've described, I wouldn't trust everything kids say these days.  I'd have kids blatantly cheat, admit to it face-to-face with me... then go tell their parents how I was unfair and they never cheated. They'd even go to the principal in an attempt to get it changed.

I'm what you call a bad student, I can honestly say only 3 of my teachers actually tried (and failed) to get me to get my act together, in retrospect I now know they were trying to help me contrary to what I thought... but yeah my other teachers basically didn't care when I walked out of class or slept instead of working or talked the whole period, they just wrote me a referral, I'd throw it away and that would be the end of it.