Let teachers teach!

By Katherine Schleiss

Every time I log into my computer and visit cnn.com, I usually have the expectation that I will see the quality of journalistic work that I aspire to one day be able to match. CNN has long been established as a reliable, fair and unbiased source of news and has long been used as a standard for student reporters to learn the tricks of the trade of writing interesting and timely news articles.

Today, however, when I visited the website and quickly scanned the myriad headlines at the welcome page, I couldn’t help but be taken aback at what an amazing measure of stupidity some web editor had shown in allowing the following article to even be selected for publishing, let alone making it a featured selection.

The article in question is simply titled “Teacher caught yelling at students.” As though no teacher on the face on the planet has ever yelled at a class of yelling, whining, screaming children in order to establish some order and be able to teach.

In the article, the teacher involved was caught yelling at her students when parents placed a tape recorder in their daughter’s backpack as she went to school one day. The daughter had complained to her parents that her teacher was “mean.” The class had been acting completely out of control, according to the teacher, and the only way of getting through to them was for her to raise her voice.

When I was in grade school, teachers yelled when their students were unruly. And the students deserved every punishment and yelling that they received. At the time, irrational children may have considered their teacher to be acting out of order, but imagine being in the teacher’s shoes for just a moment.

Imagine that you have just spent all day stuck in a hot, sticky classroom with screaming kids. Without raising your voice, there’s really no hope that you will ever be able to get through to them and make them sit in their seats, learn their schoolwork and become functioning members of society.

Sure, the kids might be hurt at the harsh words of a teacher for a few moments, but in the long run they will learn that it is neither appropriate nor acceptable to behave in such a manner that warrants yelling. That is, if they realize that acting crazy will result in them being yelled at, then they would stop acting like imbeciles.

Never mind that parents get angry at teachers when students aren’t learning anything, when students are learning too much, when students are being taught things that are supposed to be taught as directed by curriculum, when students are being taught things that are not supposed to be taught as directed by curriculum, when students are being disciplined and when students are not being disciplined.

Since when did it become OK for teachers to have to walk on eggshells around their class just because they are afraid of overprotective, zealous parents who threaten to sue the teacher, the district, and everyone who has ever breathed the same air as their child just because they can home with one single hair ruffled out of place on their perfect, immaculate, faultless heads?

Teachers have a right to be able to teach. After all, that’s their job. But when children get out of hand and need to be put, gently, in their place, teachers may need to raise their voices in order to get in control of the situation and resolve any problems that may have arisen.

That’s not to say that teachers have a right to completely lose their temper and harm a child, either physically or emotionally. Children should never be afraid to go to school because of an abusive teacher.

CNN should have known not to even consider this to be a valid article to place in their website in the first place. After all, reporters were students were students once, too.