The Professionalism in Teaching

The Professionalism in Teaching
By Valerie Ringrose

The Professionalism in Teaching
Schools are constantly becoming more relaxed and loose both in rules and in procedures. This has had both positive and negative effects on the educational systems. Teachers are losing authority, students are losing respect, and the professional life is intermingling with the personal life. In the past, the teacher would have full authority over his or her pupils. The students would have to show absolute respect for their teacher. If this was not shown, the student could be whipped or even beaten. This has since been banned. in Canada, but it continues to exist in less developed countries. It would have been nice if the violence had passed, but the authority of the teacher had stuck around. Today’s students seem to be less and less respectful of their teachers. Students in private schools continue to stand up when their teachers walk in. Most students today, however, wouldn’t even think of doing this. They have never learned to, and they do not have as much respect for their teachers. This lack of reverence is creating many discipline problems. What happened to respect? In today’s society, children are becoming more and more powerful in the world. They are not being taught manners or etiquette as much as before. Children are not being disciplined as they were in the past. They are not going to church as much as they used to. Children are getting to know their teachers better. They are forever testing their limits, and if teachers don’t crack down on them for breaking a barrier, that barrier may as well be said to no longer exist. The gap between elder and friend is continuously narrowing in the student-teacher relationship. What about all those teachers who are losing their teaching certificates for misconduct or malpractice on the job? Do they really deserve this severe punishment? The latest incident in Ontario is the teacher who had a relationship with a grade eight boy. It has created quite a bit of controversy, but had the teacher been male and the student female, there would have been no doubt that the teacher would have gone to jail. Here we see the teacher’s professional life and personal life intermingling into one- a universal taboo in the world of work. In the past, as soon as a female teacher married, she had to leave her job. Today, this no longer happens, and it creates uncertainty in what a teacher should and should not do well on the job. It is essential that we draw the line between the two lives of teachers. Only then can teaching be as effective as it should be.