Posted by Marc on September 09, 2002 at 08:44:11:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Why should we have to defend teachers? posted by Kenneth Sloan on September 08, 2002 at 22:29:02:
Kenneth--I didn't mean to insult you. You are obviously a responsible and thoughtful person. You could have taken my comments as a compliment! For again I believe that a good college teacher can be (with little adaptation) a good high school teacher. Which means that if you are as good a college teacher as you say (of which I have no doubt), then you would be a good high school teacher (with little adaptation) in my opinion. Actually, I think you're selling yourself short. So I'm sorry that you took my comments to be insulting. (I can see how they could be taken that way, but note that nowehere do I say that *you* were unable to earn respect from your students, etc..) I still maintain (and haven't seen good evidence to the contrary) that there's no essential, significant difference between teaching at the college and high school levels. Any differences that seem intractable are in my mind either illusory or are largely artificial, created by the current educational climate. (If you're interested, I've been heavily influenced by John Holt, Tolstoy, Wollstonecraft, and Friere on this matter.) So I think you're wrong about this issue, but please don't take that to mean that I think less of you as a person. In respectful disagreement. Marc