I’m a STEM teacher. What do you mean by aggressive and abusive? Maybe I can try to make sense of the behavior? Also, what year and subjects are we talking about, if you want to share that?
Some of your colleagues treat learners like petulant children who they can hardly contain their disgust for. Imagine Terence Fletcher from Whiplash, but teaching a chemistry lesson. Those same people often would hardly care if half their class died in a violent explosion since anyone’s presence is nothing but an annoyance.
God forbid you don’t understand the material the first time around. Half fun getting the most passive-aggressive, patronizing, demeaning, dehumanizing, and demoralizing beatdown during office hours, or worse, in front of the class. Making fun of students, degrading comments, and open mockery are usually just the opening act. The best of the best is when those faculty treat students like a misbehaving, intellectually stunted child.
This behavior is not nearly the majority, but is prevalent among STEM in a way I have never seen tolerated amongst any other faculty.
At a university level you can find a lot of STEM professors who signed up for the research, and have no interest in teaching. That causes a lot of issues and I’ve experienced this both on the inside and outside. Also, some of them take it upon themselves to be gatekeepers for the field. Meaning they think that by being hard on students, they ensure only the best end up taking those careers. Others think they are preparing students for how hard it can get in future courses. You can also blame a good chunk on arrogance and self-importance. And as others have pointed out, an inherent failure to understand what students know and how to get down to that level to help them learn more.
Ultimately though, it’s good to remember that university teachers are NOT trained teachers. They have no idea how to transmit ideas, especially if they are young, unless they were lucky enough to absorb good teaching methods through their own student experience, or they learned how to be better teachers through self-reflection, experience, and trial-and-error.
At a school level, things can be a bit different. The STEM fields in many countries have overloaded curriculi, and in many cases schools are understaffed. As a result, you get overworked teachers being under tremendous stress to finish a vast and difficult curriculum in a very finite time, trying to wrangle a class of overworked and hyperactive children/teenagers who become disinterested due to the difficulty of the subject. It can really become a vicious cycle in some cases.
That’s not to say that school STEM teachers can’t have the failings of university STEM teachers, but there’s different factors at play. In my current job (at a high school), out of 25 or so STEM teachers (total for the various subjects), I’d say 5-6 definitely fall in the category of teachers you’d hate. At a previous job (lab technician and teaching assistant in a university) I’d say out of 50 or so professors I was working with, probably 10 were good and beloved teachers. But that’s always going to be subjective.
And I should point out that as a school STEM teacher for all levels, I always keep in mind that things do get much harder as students progress classes, and missing out on even small details early on can be detrimental later on. So I try to be a bit strict in class to save up on the time needed to help the students understand the subject, rather than just brush on the basics and have them memorize the rest. In some rare cases that gets me in trouble with parents, but in most cases students actually understand this approach and appreciate it. That’s because I’m upfront about it from the beginning, and I get the sense that students like being treated like equals in that way, so they get on with the program.
I’m only saying this to illustrate that many teachers, even at university level, don’t really know how to treat students as humans like this. They always see their class as a bunch of children, regardless of age, and as a result the students see the teacher as a senile uptight dictator.
At any rate, my advice to you is that you should understand it’s unavoidable to encounter these kinds of bad teachers. Sometimes there’s not much you can do about it. Take whatever you can from their class, or see if there’s a way to approach them more personally to learn something from them. But generally, just sigh and then adapt your studying to the situation. If they keep referencing things you don’t understand, and fail to explain them, then note it down and go look up that stuff on your own. If their attitude is dismissive and arrogant, then seek help in understanding something from other students or professors in the same field.
I’m a STEM teacher. What do you mean by aggressive and abusive? Maybe I can try to make sense of the behavior? Also, what year and subjects are we talking about, if you want to share that?
Some of your colleagues treat learners like petulant children who they can hardly contain their disgust for. Imagine Terence Fletcher from Whiplash, but teaching a chemistry lesson. Those same people often would hardly care if half their class died in a violent explosion since anyone’s presence is nothing but an annoyance.
God forbid you don’t understand the material the first time around. Half fun getting the most passive-aggressive, patronizing, demeaning, dehumanizing, and demoralizing beatdown during office hours, or worse, in front of the class. Making fun of students, degrading comments, and open mockery are usually just the opening act. The best of the best is when those faculty treat students like a misbehaving, intellectually stunted child.
This behavior is not nearly the majority, but is prevalent among STEM in a way I have never seen tolerated amongst any other faculty.
At a university level you can find a lot of STEM professors who signed up for the research, and have no interest in teaching. That causes a lot of issues and I’ve experienced this both on the inside and outside. Also, some of them take it upon themselves to be gatekeepers for the field. Meaning they think that by being hard on students, they ensure only the best end up taking those careers. Others think they are preparing students for how hard it can get in future courses. You can also blame a good chunk on arrogance and self-importance. And as others have pointed out, an inherent failure to understand what students know and how to get down to that level to help them learn more.
Ultimately though, it’s good to remember that university teachers are NOT trained teachers. They have no idea how to transmit ideas, especially if they are young, unless they were lucky enough to absorb good teaching methods through their own student experience, or they learned how to be better teachers through self-reflection, experience, and trial-and-error.
At a school level, things can be a bit different. The STEM fields in many countries have overloaded curriculi, and in many cases schools are understaffed. As a result, you get overworked teachers being under tremendous stress to finish a vast and difficult curriculum in a very finite time, trying to wrangle a class of overworked and hyperactive children/teenagers who become disinterested due to the difficulty of the subject. It can really become a vicious cycle in some cases.
That’s not to say that school STEM teachers can’t have the failings of university STEM teachers, but there’s different factors at play. In my current job (at a high school), out of 25 or so STEM teachers (total for the various subjects), I’d say 5-6 definitely fall in the category of teachers you’d hate. At a previous job (lab technician and teaching assistant in a university) I’d say out of 50 or so professors I was working with, probably 10 were good and beloved teachers. But that’s always going to be subjective.
And I should point out that as a school STEM teacher for all levels, I always keep in mind that things do get much harder as students progress classes, and missing out on even small details early on can be detrimental later on. So I try to be a bit strict in class to save up on the time needed to help the students understand the subject, rather than just brush on the basics and have them memorize the rest. In some rare cases that gets me in trouble with parents, but in most cases students actually understand this approach and appreciate it. That’s because I’m upfront about it from the beginning, and I get the sense that students like being treated like equals in that way, so they get on with the program.
I’m only saying this to illustrate that many teachers, even at university level, don’t really know how to treat students as humans like this. They always see their class as a bunch of children, regardless of age, and as a result the students see the teacher as a senile uptight dictator.
At any rate, my advice to you is that you should understand it’s unavoidable to encounter these kinds of bad teachers. Sometimes there’s not much you can do about it. Take whatever you can from their class, or see if there’s a way to approach them more personally to learn something from them. But generally, just sigh and then adapt your studying to the situation. If they keep referencing things you don’t understand, and fail to explain them, then note it down and go look up that stuff on your own. If their attitude is dismissive and arrogant, then seek help in understanding something from other students or professors in the same field.