“[We] are moving away from excellence rather than moving towards it”, as quoted from a professor as few interviews were conducted here in Adamson University about the screening and expulsion of teachers who can’t really teach and who “doesn’t really teach” even if they already have their master’s or doctor’s degrees.
What constitutes a good and effective professor? If they are the ‘educators’, then the students are the ‘learners’? If so, what separates the ‘two’ from colliding with each other and defining their roles in the institution?
Is there really such a thing as an ‘incompetent’ professor? According to one of the professors’, “There’s no such thing”. He said that even if there is ‘such’ a teacher maybe because he or she has very little experience, knowledge and understanding about the subject matter. And yes, teaching techniques do matter. If a certain professor doesn’t know his or her given subject matter that much, he or she is incompetent in teaching this, for the simple reason that this is not his or her specialization. He or she is incompetent in that kind of subject but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he or she is incompetent in the whole of teaching. It all depends on the “objective capacity” of the students, as well as their colleagues, to conclude that one is “incompetent”. People differ in their understanding about things in general. That’s what separates us from others: our capacity to have our own objective thinking. But that should not make us be judgmental about a certain person or his abilities, and in this case, the teaching methods of a certain professor. It all bears down to the interests that the students (as well as their professors) cater to. Nobody can be a “jack of all trades”; lest he or she is a superhero who can do several things simultaneously. Besides, who would even brand a teacher, ‘incompetent’? The students? If so, “what is their objective capacity to evaluate”? “That’s why they [the professors] have finished their degree/s because they know what they are doing”.
In reality, we are the students; they are the professors. We go to them to learn new things, and that includes the things that are not even in the curriculum. They also serve as “professors of life”, who give us a small lectures about real life every so often. They reach for us to share their knowledge. Some students would not understand this symbiotic relationship while others do. It is not about being self-righteous on the part of this editorial or on the part of the professors, but as a student, how can you say that this certain professor is indeed :incompetent” in your standards if you yourself haven’t graduated yet in college? As a professor, how can you judge your so-called colleague that he or she is incompetent if you yourself know that people have different perspectives and different specializations?
If we would screen the professors to “pick out” the incompetent ones (like it’s a disease or something), what do we want to prove? That these “handpicked” professors are not viable to teach? How can that contend to the specialization/s that they offer? There are varying teaching methods, and as professors, they absolutely know what they are doing. We do believe that there are no incompetent professors; and we do believe that there are no incompetent students either. There is just this incompetent understanding and behavior between the two groups. Whether we admit it or not, there is this idealism that clashes between a professor and his/her students, therefore creating this kind of crumbling relationship between the two. Tolerance is one big heap of admonishing the breath of cognitive thinking. Hate and biases crumble down this tolerance, crushing the “utopia” of learning and teaching.
So, what then is a professor? If he or she is a person who professes to be an expert and has a degree in a field of study, then the reasons behind their screening and expulsions are indeed subjective and is backed up with viable cases and the students are the just the mere products of the imparted knowledge given by a teacher. Thus, no one can take away the being of a professor because it will stay with them and they will continue to spread their wisdom even at times they undergo criticisms and unruly accusations from “students”.
As students, we can’t be rebels all the time. As Jesse Delia has proposed in his Constructivism Theory, conflicts all depend on our self-constructed realities. Professors, as diverse as they are, have their own constructed realities, too. If we would try to break out of this, and to throw away our prejudices, and try to disseminate equal respect for both the professor and his or her teaching methods and to try to understand them as they also try to understand us, incompetence would be ruled out of the question. “I think; therefore I am”, as Rene Descartes put it.
* Interviewees were not named because of the sensitivity of the topic. However, feel free to ask the writers about the stance of this.
* thanks to my partner for this paper, Conrad. we made it!
Tags: professors, screening, incompetence
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