Question:
For four days this week I sat in meetings, etc. at the high school I'm teaching at (my last year) and I realized the Young ones were rather arrogant in their disdain for the senior opinions and smug in their own assessments while the Old were just the same in their demeanours.
I'm not sure what was accomplished this week, little I suspect, but what I observed is a rather chronic condition I believe and probably timeless.
we can use that as a metaphor for any number of human conditions.
That's whats on my mind tonight. Any comments.
Answer:
I'm 54 which isn't terribly old yet, I don't think. I recall when I was first starting out in the teaching profession I believed I had a certain energy or awareness or something that set me apart from the teachers now my age.
I probably came across as something of a mystery, or perhaps arrogant, though I've always had a respect toward listening to the elders to see what I might learn from them. Probably what I was brought up with, and because of that I at least would consider other people's ideas even if they were two or three or many more decades older than me.
But this week in the meetings I detected the newest batch of teachers in their early 20s expressing what I called arrogant attitudes toward the ideas of the old guard and visa versa.
For example: one young member of our staff kept referring to the "way it used to be ain't no more and we gotta adjust to the times if we want to get the message across" while one of the older ones soon to retire referred to "if it worked once it'll work again we just gotta all enforce the rules and just do it."
Those kind of "arguments" took place over a number of topics. I did, however, hear some of each category agreeing with the other, so this "arrogance" wasn't universal.
Change is good. Recognizing what the true goal consists of is necessary. When teachers teach students how to take tests but not how to think the goal is to make the schools and the staffs look good in the reports but doesn't give a damn about the student. Unfortunatly no-one seems to care about the education of the kids. Many are playing the game of "look good" while others want to indoctrinate good little children in their religious beliefs. Maybe there is no way for it to be otherwise since self interest is natural.
