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Add to FavoritesTeachers are an important force for positive change both locally and globally because of their roles and functions. Teachers are members of society because they act as a bridge from the world of youthful folly to the world of adult responsibility. The role of teachers should not be parenting even though some forms of behavior management are used in many schools today. In this sense teachers are also supplemental parents as well as guides to the mind and world. Educational programming is believed to assist in helping children learn and grow both behaviorally and educationally.
In other words, teachers are not just academic, they are also coaches, mentors, leaders and role models. Next to parents, teachers are probably the next adults in line in terms of exposure time to children and adolescents. Children see teachers weekly from as young as 3 year's old and continue to do so throughout their later teens and beyond. Thus, teachers have a lot of exposure during which time children can be positively affected.Through the aforementioned roles, teachers have the potential to affect positive change both locally and globally. Specifically this can be done in the following ways:
Positive reinforcement of good behavior
Pro-active hands on learning
Leading by example
Engaging students minds in addition to preparing them for standardized tests
Supporting and engaging extra-curricular activities and interests
While there are many teaching styles and attitudes, students are most susceptible to influence when they are in their formative years. This places an inherent biological cue in the hands of all teachers whether they acknowledge it or not. It is through this influence that parents and teachers alike can teach important and beneficial lessons that will be essential for survival in an increasingly globalized World. Elements of a locally and globally integrated world incorporate several things as follows:
Knowledge and awareness of cultural diversity
Understanding and conceptualization of an increasing globalized economy
Lessons about the importance of community responsibility and leadership
Teaching of important contemporary scientific issues such as global warming and energy conservation
Preparing students for a competitive and rapidly changing technological and social environment
In a sense teachers are both instructors of the mind and behavior. In the former case they are charged with the responsibility of facilitating mental agility and cognitive development and in the latter sense they serve as examples of adulthood and are authorities on how to become an adult. It is through these highly exposed roles teachers play that they have the capacity to affect positive change in the development of children and youth for the better.
Since teachers exist in all countries and for a wide variety of activities ranging from sports to robotics to personal development, teachers are in affect a global institution of change in and of themselves. Through strong local and international teacher education the positive influence teachers can also develop their own capacity for positive change. Through local and professional organizations teachers have an influence in how today's and tomorrow's children are educated in addition to what students learn.
To summarize, teachers are an important force for positive change both locally and globally for a number of reasons including exposure to children, leadership positions in children's lives, the receptiveness and impressionability of pupils during their younger years, and the effectiveness of the teacher's ability to educate via educational techniques and programs. For teachers to be an important force for positive change, a teacher ideally is educated him/her self and able to implement lesson programs and curriculum in such a way that students learn and grow in ways that benefit other students and the world into which they partake.
Learn more about this author, A.W. Berry.
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Disagree
I challenge the question's implication that teachers are responsible for positive global change. Let's be careful about that. Teachers have a mission . . . to impart knowledge of their expertise to children who resist every word they say. A very tough job. I don't believe they should be burdened with saving the world. That's up to parents, family, friends and neighborhoods, religions and cultural icons.
Teachers are amazing, an absolute necessity, and I support them as often as I can with money, boxes of reams of paper, and joining School Action Committees (SACs). Teaching, nevertheless, is a profession, not an immutable force for good or evil. Teachers patiently impart knowledge and it's up to parents and families and communities to help students learn how to use that knowledge for positive change.
As much as the NEA and AFT suggest they have overwhelming influence over life itself, such claims are more consistent with political rhetoric than fact. Teachers, God bless 'em, remain in the trenches as the ones who train our children in the basics of information: reading and writing, basic mathematics, and, in some cases, inspiring the grand prize; that learning never stops, that the more we know, the more we need to explore, research, question and revise our beliefs to, by Jiminy, discover the ongoing brilliance, color, and music of life.
Teachers can only do so much. They are a specifically trained and educated part of the broad communal gestalt that gives our children the tools and understanding to act in positive ways . . . or not.
The concept of general education took centuries to happen. By the early 20th century, the idea that all American children would attend school was accepted. It still took decades to force upon parents a national standard for basic education that superseded a family's desires or objections. That debate is yet to be settled.
While it may be argued that movers and shakers throughout history were generally better educated (therefore "taught" by a teacher), whether the resulting change was positive or negative is certainly debatable.
George Counts, PhD (1889-1974) was one of the first to write extensively about and promote the idea that educators were not only better able, but responsible for proper moral, ethical, economic, and political thinking. He believed that educators should be policy-makers in all walks of life and decide between conflicting purposes and values. By his reckoning, teachers were better qualified to decide issues than Congress or the Supreme Court. With a sort of smug class distinction, Counts attributed a higher moral and ethical standard to the educated than those who worked the land, toiled in the factories, or pioneered unpopular ideas.
I disagree with Counts' autocratic view that educators are omniscient judges of cultural change. While I support his zeal for education as an impetus for national and personal progress, I remember my first grade teacher who mercilessly beat my hand with a ruler because I wrote with my left. I survived that and became an artist just to prove her wrong.
Teaching plays a critical role in the formation and maintenance of our national character, but should not be held accountable for the failure of parents, extended family, friends and workplaces, churches and communities, which bear the greater burden in shaping the ideals of ethical behavior and the moral fiber to rise to the challenges of local and global change.
Learn more about this author, Michael Patrick.
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