Hello, Farsuccess,
Thank you for your good comments, it helps a lot. These problems come up when I have to draft my essay in thirty minutes. Any suggestion on how to solve these problems are mostly welcomed.
Cheers,
Jack Q
____ Revised topic 097____
When it comes to the notion that teachers should be paid according to how much their students learn, I feel such a negative attitude. Although I understand the purpose of this idea is to improve teachers' performance and the quality of education, it is implausible that teacher's performance can be measured, simply by examining how much their students have learned. Consequently, such criteria are sure to result in problems.
First of all, how much student learned from their teachers can hardly be measured. The common practice is to conduct examinations. However, what examination can probe is only a small portion of knowledge, comparing with what students have learned from their teachers. The student who has the highest score not always knows more than other students, for not all of the knowledge that students gained are measured in exams. Since test results are unable to show how much that student actually learned, in the same manner, test results are unable to qualify their teacher's performance as well.
Secondly, suppose even there is a better way to measure how much student can learn from their teachers, however, connecting teachers' performance with it is still unadvisable, because how much student will learn largely depends on the efforts of students themselves. Without the strong will to study hard and learn more from their teachers, students are not supposed to get much knowledge, even if their have a well qualified teacher. On the other hand, some good students are able to study independently and effectively to acquire quite much knowledge even they were taught by unqualified or irresponsible teachers. Generally, good study results come greatly from students' individual efforts apart from teachers’ too.
Last but not least, it is hard to measure and equalize how much students learn in different courses, for the nature and amount of knowledge varies. Students are supposed to learn a great deal of knowledge from informative courses such as history and literature. However, they learn less information but get more experience in courses such as music and physical education. According to the argument that teachers should be paid upon how much their student learned, teachers who teach different courses would be unequally paid because of the nature of various disciplines. And, this would inevitably exert a negative impact on teachers’ performance, and consequently, on total educational quality.
In summary, regarding the actual complexity of education quality measurement mentioned above, which involves the measurement of education result, the effective teachers' effort, the different nature of various disciplines and the possible negative consequence, it is arbitrary to decide how much teachers should be paid simply according to how much their students learn. |