Those who teach shouldn’t push personal opinions onto their students.
Students come to school to learn, to grow and to gain wisdom in order to make their own decisions and form their own opinions.
An instructor’s job is to teach the facts, all the facts, to provide their students with enough information to come to their own conclusions. If professors push their pre-formed ideas onto students rather than dispensing factual information, they distract students from actual learning.
Not all those who teach are subjective and self-absorbed. There are objective and well-balanced professors at Amarillo College who keep their opinions, religious and political views and judgments on moral issues to themselves.
They each have a good and fair reputation among students and colleagues. It is how we think all professors should behave.
If more acted with such integrity, more students would respect them and want to learn from them rather than considering them “easy ride” instructors.
To those who do your jobs well, we salute you. It isn’t an easy task.
When professors push their ideas as superior to their subject matter and spend time sharing marital problems, sexual quirks, private issues, addictions, religious beliefs, political preferences, life philosophy or personal likes and dislikes in lieu of actual teaching, it shows an overactive ego and a deep-seated disrespect for students and their education.
Whether an educator likes a particular student’s looks, style, scent, body type, ethnicity, attitude, sexual preference, ideas or personality should have no influence on how they grade the student’s work. Either the student learns or doesn’t learn.
If people allow their emotions to rule their decision-making, they lose the ability to think and act objectively.
When that occurs, their actual ability to teach is called into question because their grading and teaching are inconsistent with each other.
Professors should stay on topic and teach the information students will need as they get to higher-level classes.
Without a firm educational foundation, the whole learning structure will fall.
When professors create a hostile learning environment and try to dominate as the alpha male or female, they project an attitude of one-upmanship and force students to choose sides on any given issue.
It causes many students to avoid engaging in class discussions for fear of ridicule and consequences.
Refusal to allow open and honest discussion of differing viewpoints without taking an attack stance closes the communication pathway and is counterproductive.
We want more objectivity, facts, understanding, knowledge and assistance.
We want perpetual learners to teach us, because the best teachers know that they don’t know everything and that sometimes they can learn from their students.
Sometimes students have more life experience with the subject being taught than the professor ever learned from books and schooling.
It doesn’t hurt to learn more unless your mind is closed or it is so open, the brains have fallen out.
We want teachers to know that while they know quite a lot, no one knows everything there is to know about any subject.
Faculty, broaden your minds. Let us learn from each other and teach us the facts we want to know.
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