Live data from Hacker News

Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results

online.wsj.com

1–10 of 74 posts

Re: Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results

#3
Back in high school, our journalism teacher was legendary for his scathing, but usually humorous criticism. And yet the Friday after we published the newspaper, critique day, was one of the most-eagerly anticipated days, as he would alternate between complementing people and then ripping others apart for not just things like punctuation and sentence structure, but higher-level failures such as failing to interview key people and providing fair coverage. A lot of students cried and even though he's still a teacher today, I can't imagine that the discipline and excellence he demanded would go over well today.

But it worked, the newspaper and yearbook were consistently the best in the country. It wasn't just a niche club, they were actually credit classes that filled up. It was actually cool* to be on staff, despite how seriously it was taken (though thinking back, my main contribution was installing NES emulators on all the machines, so it couldn't have been that serious)...

Edit: to clarify, I can't recall if he "ripped" into people for spelling errors/grammatical mistakes, though he'd point them out in a funny way and move on. But boy, if you did something like a professional breach...such as interview your same best friend for an article that you did last month, he might go off on it. Sloppy writing (burying the lede) was also jumped on, but in a constructive way. But that kind of constructive criticism...singling someone out in class...I didn't see it much out of high school.

Re: Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results

#4
> What makes a teacher successful? ... Their No. 1 finding: "They were strict," she says. "None of us expected that."

Teachers are not successful because they are strict (it's not directly causative): they are successful because they are in command of the classroom.

You can gain better command of a classroom through fear of abuse, yes, but this is not a method we should aspire to.

Re: Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results

#5
post #4

> What makes a teacher successful? ... Their No. 1 finding: "They were strict," she says. "None of us expected that." Teachers are not successful because they are strict (it's not directly causative): they are successful because they are in command of the classroom. You can gain better command of a classroom through fear of abuse, yes, but this is not a method we should aspire to.

Strictness and abuse are completely unrelated. To imply that to require pupils obey rules is abuse is mind boggling.

Re: Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results

#6
post #5
post #4

> What makes a teacher successful? ... Their No. 1 finding: "They were strict," she says. "None of us expected that." Teachers are not successful because they are strict (it's not directly causative): they are successful because they are in command of the classroom. You can gain better command of a classroom through fear of abuse, yes, but this is not a method we should aspire to.

Strictness and abuse are completely unrelated. To imply that to require pupils obey rules is abuse is mind boggling.

The article is deliberately connecting the two (e.g. in the first paragraph), which is why I comment on it.

Re: Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results

#7
post #6
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strictness and abuse are completely unrelated. To imply that to require pupils obey rules is abuse is mind boggling.

The article is deliberately connecting the two (e.g. in the first paragraph), which is why I comment on it.

The quote you used was from a paper unrelated to abuse in any fashion, the anecdote at the beginning of the article was not relevant to that quote.

Re: Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results

#8
post #6
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strictness and abuse are completely unrelated. To imply that to require pupils obey rules is abuse is mind boggling.

The article is deliberately connecting the two (e.g. in the first paragraph), which is why I comment on it.

7th paragraph:

> Now I'm not calling for abuse; I'd be the first to complain if a teacher called my kids names

Re: Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results

#9
post #6
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strictness and abuse are completely unrelated. To imply that to require pupils obey rules is abuse is mind boggling.

The article is deliberately connecting the two (e.g. in the first paragraph), which is why I comment on it.

> Now I'm not calling for abuse; I'd be the first to complain if a teacher called my kids names.

No, the article explicitly creates a separation.

Re: Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results

#10
post #2

Its "Why tough teachers get good SAT scores" not good education results.

The delightful irony of refuting an article that painstakingly makes the case that the conventional wisdom is wrong by curtly repeating the conventional wisdom.

SAT scores are mentioned exactly once in the article (well, twice, but in reference to the same finding), I have copy-pasted it for your convenience:

> When she applied the ["Grit Scale"] to incoming West Point cadets, she found that those who scored higher were less likely to drop out of the school's notoriously brutal summer boot camp known as "Beast Barracks." West Point's own measure—an index that includes SAT scores, class rank, leadership and physical aptitude—wasn't able to predict retention.

Post reply on HN