Look back on your own education, do children today get a better or worse education than you did?

 
TeAch-nology.com's Teacher Poll of the Week
Look back on your own education, do children today get a better or worse education than you did?
Much Better ( I wish I was in school now.) 28.4%
Much Worse (I feel concern for today's students.) 24.3%
Slightly Better ( They have a slight advantage over what I had.) 22.7%
Slightly Worse (Education needs a change for the better.) 14.8%
Neutral (Education is of comparable quality.) 9.8%

Total Votes: 732


 
Home
 

There were a lot of possible responses in this poll and the top three answers were very close in number of respondents. More teachers voted that students received a much better education than any other category but the margin was very slight. The second place response was that students received a much worse education. The two extreme answers received the most number of votes.

The teachers who feel that things are much better or worse accounted for more than 50% of the vote. Third in line were the teachers who feel that children today receive a slightly better education. Finally teachers who feel education is slightly worse or neutral accounted for about one quarter of the votes.

When looking at whether education is better or worse we can look at overall votes. Much better and slightly better received just over 50%, while much worse and slightly worse received around 40% of the votes. This is a distressingly small margin of victory for today's educational system.

With all the advantages that today's students have it is surprising that so many teachers feel that the educational system needs to change for the better. There is access to technology that was unavailable twenty years ago and students are being given extra-curricular opportunities never dreamed of previously.

What could be the reason for so many negative responses? Perhaps teachers looking back at their own education are doing a little rewriting of history. It's not uncommon to look back and see things a little rosier that they actually were. That's why there are so many stories that talk about the good old days. The old days weren't really all that good. There was no running water, electricity or supermarkets and there certainly wasn't any Playstation. What was so good about any of that?

Maybe with the perspective that comes from adulthood and joining the teaching profession, teachers are now more able to see the failings of the system. Perhaps these failings or similar ones have always been part of the system but they were difficult to recognize from the perspective of a child. Don't forget that back in the good old days, our grandfathers walked two miles to school, in the snow, with no boots. Those were the days.