Should students be allowed to grade their teachers?
Posted by | Posted in Education Debates
photo taken from panix.com
This is a topic I’m sure we will see be debated by mostly college students. A lot of universities and institutions have adopted this technique where the students get to fill out evaluation forms to “rate their teachers”.
Should students be allowed to grade their teachers?
Yes, I believe that they should. Some professors are good and some aren't. I've been stuck with a lot of crappy teachers which killed my GPA, while others get the easy ones and fly right by. It's all based on the professor you have. Students should definitely be allowed to rate their teachers.
Definitely! I've had teachers who had to run next door and ask the head of department for help with misbehaving students. And she wasn't training or anything. Just useless. I got to write comments on how useful I'd found that term at school and I practically graded her (without giving her the U grade she deserved)
Am I the only one who thinks this is a horrible idea?
It would indirectly give the students authority over teachers. Many students are young, shallow, and immature. They would intentionally fail teachers who do not give them a below average amount of work or teachers who don't curve their test. Teachers, in return, will not focus on teaching the students. They will instead focus on trying to please the students in order for them to keep their job.
But you have to remember a majority of students have a shallow view of life, not just a few students. Students put their immediate short-term needs first while teachers and administrators do not.
I am starting to agree with you though. If the grading system is fair and prevents that kind of stuff from happening, I would support it possibly.
I have to disagree with you. Now of course there is going to be those students who do that, but there will be a way to detect it. Have you ever heard of the saying if more than one person says it about you, its obviously not them its you. Now I believe this will work because according to my research there are teachers who dont teaqch anything but they just help their students cheat in order for their school to get higher marks. Now do you think this is fair because I sure don't. Having students grade their teachers will not only let the teacher see their flaws, but also help cut teachers who aren't teaching at all. And believe it or not but there are some teachers out there who really don't deserve to be teaching. This will allow us to see what teachers these are and higher better ones. If you can't see that then you don't care about the futures of our children and how they are going to run our country if the teachers can't teach them right!
Absolutely not, the majority and I'm talking close to 80% of students in HS and College do not have the necessary maturity to understand that many teachers are more concerned with getting the students properly educated rather than how much the student likes them. They just know that they get alot of work and their teacher is a hard-ass. I agree completely that teachers need a review process that cultivates higher standards of education, but that review process should be objectively run by the schools administration.
Children who have not had a serious job where their lively-hood is involved, where they have bills to pay, mortgages to meet, and children of their own to support should not have a sway over the jobs of educate individuals will worldly responsibilities.
You're talking about an extremely small margin of teachers performing this cheating "service". If this is happeneing in a school it's the job of the administrators to do something about it. Not the underage minors in the education system. NEVER put the kids in the middle of a situation like that.
Don't have the underage students grade the certified teachers, have the teachers review each other, have the administrator review the teachers, have the PTA review the teachers, have ANYONE ELSE who isn't a 15 years old child review the teachers….
Let students vote with their feet. They vote when they decide what college to go to and what classes to take. They vote when they decide what grade school to go to (oh wait, they don't have the right to choose that… Go Charter Schools!) When there's no penalty, payment reaction or to a vote then people vote stupidly. Students are no exception. There has to be some form of direct related consequence in order for people to see the recourse of their voting. oF course this gets to why capitalism > democracy, but it's just more evident in children, because then we see the idiocy of people bold faced and wide eyed.
You also have to consider that teachers can be as petty and immature as students at times. If one teacher doesn't like another, they can fail the other teacher to have them taken out the same way a student can fail a teacher for giving them to much work or not the grades they want.
I agree that its not a good idea only due to how cruel humans can be to one another due to such small things. However, your reasoning of ' they just arn't mature enough ' can't be justified. Mind you, I know that there are immature 13 year olds but I also know that there are MATURE ones as well. Same can go for someone in their late 20s'. Using personal experience, my uncle have 4 kids of his own and 1 adopted. 5 kids all together, and he spends more money on video games than giving his children nutritious food.
Yes, students should be allowed to grade teachers. Grading system will help appraise the performance of the teachers and measure the satisfaction level of the students. This in turn will help teachers to mark their areas of improvement. Thus the quality management is in progress