by Earl Mcgill

Created on: April 13, 2008

Does teacher bias really corrupt education? Depending on your definitions of bias and corrupt, the answer can be either "yes" and "no," In this particular context, "bias" might best be defined as "a preference or an inclination that inhibits impartial judgment." Not much help, but neither is the dictionary version of corrupt, which is, "to destroy or subvert the honesty or integrity of-" in this case, education. Based on these interpretations, it should be obvious that bias alone can hardly be accused of corrupting a system that is running out of gas and in imminent danger of crashing.

Let's face it: all of us are, to some degree, biased. It is also apparent that someone else can construe a person's particular "value" as a bias. This is particularly true when the so-called value is controversial. Nonetheless, instructor bias, which is too often detrimental to honest learning, can also be beneficial. The educational outcome depends entirely on how a particular bias is employed. It could even be argued that a certain amount of bias is necessary in order to be effective in the classroom.

It goes without saying that teachers should be universally biased against ignorance. It should also be recognized that as they move down S. I. Hayakawa's "Ladder of Abstraction" a mere bias might metamorphose to prejudice and therefore become seriously harmful-for example, a personal definition of ignorance applied to specific subject matter, formed because of what a teacher knows and deems necessary to a state of enlightenment. Because someone is unfamiliar with Hayakawa does not mean he or she is ignorant (uninformed, perhaps).

Too many teachers are products of a system that moves them directly from high school classrooms into college classrooms, and then back to school classrooms. The resulting bias formed by this limited experience is that his or her students should be interested in the teacher's particular subject.

Lunch period in the teacher's cafeteria is often a time to vent the frustrations of trying to teach material that (let's be honest) most teenagers could care less about. During one particularly lunch session, a colleague of mine was castigating her students' lack of concern for grammar. "They don't even know what a verb is," she complained. Drawing on my woodworking interest, I asked the table if anyone knew what a "kerf" was. None did. Subsequently, I assigned my writing class the topic, "Defend or refute: Recognizing a verb is more important than knowing what a kerf

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