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Another Voice

Matthew Parris

Wednesday, 4th June 2008

There are no ‘good’ teachers: the teacher who is good for you may wreck another’s prospects

It certainly inspired me. At prize day at the end of the year, receiving (as Top Boy, Standard IIa) my leather-bound Dickens novel from the headmaster, I well knew that it was Mrs McLeod and her belief in my abilities and prospects to whom I owed the discovery, aged eight, that I was quite a bright boy whose growing confidence could take him far. I’ve known it ever since.

But IIa had its losers too. I could still name them, boys like Fernando Rodrigues who, starting with no great intellect, struggled with English. Looking back I cannot recall that there was really anything seriously wrong with any of them, including Fernando, except that for reasons either of aptitude or attitude, they had fallen a bit behind. In Mrs McLeod’s class they fell further behind because her approach was to remind boys and girls constantly of who was succeeding relative to whom.

You may perhaps expect me to conclude that the best teachers are ‘inclusive’ in the encouragement they give, but I cannot betray Mrs McLeod (who is no longer alive) in that way. It was — and was precisely — her exclusivity, her singling some of us out, that so motivated me. It was thrilling. If she’d been finding something to praise in everyone, her praise for me would have meant so much less. I owe her a lot. But I cannot go on to say it made her a ‘good’ teacher in any more universal way.

Instead I conclude that part of the answer lies in smaller classes: 40 was too many for a teacher to do more than pick a few winners and keep order among the rest. I conclude, too, that mixed-ability classes with too wide a range of ability within them can be especially discouraging to the lower end of the range; Standard II was already divided into IIa and IIb, and had IIb been included in our class the effect of Mrs McLeod’s methods would have been fatal to most of them.

These are easy conclusions but there is a harder one: that perhaps there is no such thing as a ‘good’ teacher, but simply teachers who are good for particular types of children. And perhaps — an even harder lesson — the best way of motivating a certain type of child is inherently demotivating to another type of child. It makes me sad to think my good start in life might have been the flipside of Fernando’s failure.

Matthew Parris is a columnist on the Times.

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John Ionides

June 5th, 2008 8:22am

Indeed; and it is a fundamental failing with try to turn out teaching clones crammed full of "best practice". Far better to have a range of styles, one (or more) of which will hopefully resonate with each child.

The same is, of course, true of schools. A learning environment, or set of education abjectives, that is ideal for one child might be far less suitable for another.

TDK

June 6th, 2008 10:17am

Your anecdote tells of a teacher who chose favourites and used the favourites to humiliate the other children. I'm sure such exist. I'm sure that your ego was flattered by the attention.

I'm sure there are other measures of goodness.

I recall certain teachers who were able to command the attention of a class. Teachers who had learnt the art of gaining silence by lowering the voice. These were classes in which I wasn't even in the top 50%. Despite dropping history, I still retain an interest that the teacher originally inspired.

I also recall teachers whose inability to control the class denied learning to everyone.

I teacher I know draw a parallel to acting. Each lesson is a performance and unfortunately just as there are good actors there are good teachers. Teacher training may mitigate the weaknesses of some teachers but it will never give the gift of truly inspirational teaching to those who don't have it already.

It's not that I disagree with your point that if you ask a schoolyard, who is the best teacher, you will get many different nominations. It's just that it is nonsense to suggest that there aren't better and worse teachers.

Karen Cronje

July 22nd, 2008 8:22am

I was in Mrs McLeod's class in 1978 and she still looked like this article described her!!!!! Her first name was Jean and she did have a husband. What a great teacher she was!

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