Of cource, there are teachers that truly want to help their students.
But when I was in school there were only two teachers of that kind, other 15(?) hated themselfs, their life and their students and just tried to stuff
them with info they were told to stuff them with.
Yet people, especially children, can feel very well if the person ( in this canse a teacher ) is working from his heart or if he hates everything and
everyone around him. If the teacher is in the second category, children would reject him, as well as whatever he is trying to teach them.
As for "social beings"... at school kids are usually stricktly taught that "this is good" and "this is bad". So when they will see someone doing
something that does not completely fit into this world model they were taught, they will simply label him as "bad". Could it be more effective to
teach that everybody has his own view on the world? And that there are no things that are only "good" or "bad"?
As for teaching discipline and respect..... as for me, I do respect people for what they are and what they did in (with) their lives. Teachers that
were telling me "you have to respect us! You have to respect grownups!" somehow are not respected by me or anybody else I know...
Yet I cannot even imagine those people who I respect telling me "You have to respect up!"
Now Math... it is believed that we do have two parts of our brain - logical and intuitive or creative. If one is training only his logic ( by doing
lots and lots of math ) and not doing anything creative... it would be the same as teaching one to do everything with his left hand and ignore the
right one. Sooner or later his right hand would dry out and his left hand would be overtrained. We would have a cripple that already cannot create
anything new, that is awaiting commands from others.
90% of Nobel prize winners said that their discoveries were made not only by logicaly combining their knowlege, but also by some intuition... by the
way.
Good Luck!
[edit on 30-9-2004 by bratok]