Being a teacher and a human being with an acute sense of observation, some points just cannot be missed. Increasingly, in my profession I have observed fellow colleagues who for gaining popularity and fan-fare feed the students with a false sense of self-worth in the form of encouragement. This led me to look into the nuances of encouraging an individual. How does one define encouragement?
Instead of looking at the meaning, I thought I will look into some of the synonyms of the word encouragement: boost, goad, spur, instigate and so on. Well, all the listed synonyms give a sense of pushing the individual to perform to the utmost of their abilities. But there is a catch here, sometimes there is a fine line that divided words of encouragement and empty words which instill a sense of false self-worth. If a student x is lazy and not focussed, I could encourage x to dig deep into herself and bring out her true qualities. But I could also do something else: I could attribute the feeling that inspite of not doing well, x is the best. By doing the second, I would lead x to believe that x is the best, inspite of knowing that x is not.
Well, sometimes in the pretext of encouraging a student, one should not attempt to destroy the knowledge that a student has limitations. Limitations are part of every individual and overcoming those limitations and moving ahead is a challenge everyone faces on a day-to-day basis. But to feed thoughts into a student's head that says that there are no limitation, leads to a very fatal outcome.
A teacher's greatest killjoy is when a student challenges the teacher that she/he is not respecting the student's worth. A teacher/individual ought to respect each person for what he/she is and strive to encourage in order to stimulate the students but sometimes this encouragement is done in several neagative ways by some individuals, who are gradually engaging in instilling a false sense of self-worth in a student. And I for one, cannot tolerate empty words of false self-worth.
What are your thoughts on this subject? I hope you get what I mean.
Image: Internet
Instead of looking at the meaning, I thought I will look into some of the synonyms of the word encouragement: boost, goad, spur, instigate and so on. Well, all the listed synonyms give a sense of pushing the individual to perform to the utmost of their abilities. But there is a catch here, sometimes there is a fine line that divided words of encouragement and empty words which instill a sense of false self-worth. If a student x is lazy and not focussed, I could encourage x to dig deep into herself and bring out her true qualities. But I could also do something else: I could attribute the feeling that inspite of not doing well, x is the best. By doing the second, I would lead x to believe that x is the best, inspite of knowing that x is not.
Well, sometimes in the pretext of encouraging a student, one should not attempt to destroy the knowledge that a student has limitations. Limitations are part of every individual and overcoming those limitations and moving ahead is a challenge everyone faces on a day-to-day basis. But to feed thoughts into a student's head that says that there are no limitation, leads to a very fatal outcome.
A teacher's greatest killjoy is when a student challenges the teacher that she/he is not respecting the student's worth. A teacher/individual ought to respect each person for what he/she is and strive to encourage in order to stimulate the students but sometimes this encouragement is done in several neagative ways by some individuals, who are gradually engaging in instilling a false sense of self-worth in a student. And I for one, cannot tolerate empty words of false self-worth.
What are your thoughts on this subject? I hope you get what I mean.
Image: Internet
