Teachers and Students

Patrick McMahan

The relationship between teachers and students is one of the most important relationships in society when it comes to the future prosperity and overall wellness of the people within that society.

Few people wield more power over the future of a society than the people who teach and the people being taught. Therefore, it is important how teachers and students interact in the classroom because these relations translate after school.

I personally believe that it is essential to always have an uncensored dialog in the classroom. Also, it is vital to give the students some influence in the rules that they are to abide by in the classroom. I also understand that the students are students for a reason, students need guidance, someone to teach, and keep them focused on the task of learning. For this reason, it is very important for the character of a teacher to emulate respect, integrity, evenhandedness, and open-mindedness.

An uncensored dialog in the classroom is essential to demonstrating to students that everyone has a right to state their opinions. I believe it would teach them to respect other peoples opinions more and help them gain more perspective on others point of view.

Without such free dialog in the classroom students are taught one perspective, and this lack of diverse perspectives causes them to think narrow mindedly and be ignorant of how other people think. This way of teaching inevitably will cripple the students' ability to coexist with others that are different from the classroom taught "norm". Paulo Freire stated, "Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information." My interpretation of this is basically there needs to be more thinking and discussion and less of what he calls "the banking system" which is the teacher only relays information to the students with minimum student participation.

Giving students influence over the rules that they must follow is another important aspect of the student teacher relationship that should not be overlooked. If given some power over the rules, not only will it give them more confidence in there