The role of a teacher in society can never be overstated, as they play a huge role in not just impacting knowledge on young ones but also go on to instill moral values and play the role of mentor that's inspire and shape the child into becoming someone reputable in the society in the future. However, despite how important the teacher is to a child's life, can we then completely blame them for the failure of their students? In this article, being a teacher myself, I'll be exploring this and as well state my take on who's to blame and the best way forward.
So the primary role of a teacher is to instill knowledge in their students, and secondarily, we can say their roles involve molding and guiding students in a morally upright way so they won't grow up to become a menace to society but instead become an important part of it. It's quite understandable that teachers are meant to give it their all to making sure students under their tutorship succeed, and so when a student fails, it won't be entirely wrong to put the blame on the teacher.
However, several things, in my opinion, can make a teacher save from such blames, and those other factors are parental impact and the child's response to their academics. There are situations when a teacher gives their all to making sure each student understands them and thrives, even going as far as changing teaching strategies to help different students grasp the various teaching methods being adopted.
Which means in such a case, teachers can't entirely take the blame. Sometimes parents are the bedrock of their ward's failure, even though they'll want to push the blame on teachers to save their own asses, and here I'll explain why I believe parents can also be responsible for the poor performance of their child. For instance, some parents believe once they send their children to school, then they don't need to do anything about their ward's academics anymore.
That's a very bad mindset to have because teachers duties are only around the four walls of the school or classroom; you can't expect the teacher to still come and be playing his role in your house. When a child closes from school, parents ought to play a role to vet the performance of their wards, finding out what happened in school if they're given an assignment and helping them with others; that's probably too difficult.
Instead, some parents don't bother about such, and neither will they call their students teachers or visit the school to find out about the academic performance of their wards, but when the child's fail, they'll come cursing that teachers aren't doing enough. I remember I wrote about my encounters with such parents, and you can read all about it in this article that I titled The Crucial Role of Parents in Nurturing Children's Academic Success.
Also, like I said, it's a shared responsibility; aside from the effort of the teachers and parents on the child, the child themselves has a huge role to play in their own success. Regardless of how parents and teachers put in great effort to help a child, if they themselves aren't putting in effort to help themselves by taking heed to the words of their parents and teachers, reading, and trying to become, then failure can't be avoided because it's more easily for parents to carry a child who's raised their hands as a sign of willingness than one who folds their hands, despite the continuous effort of their parents and teachers to help them.
Lastly, I'll like to chip this in that aside from teachers, parents, and students taking the blame for their poor performance, another place one can point fingers of accusations towards is the government. Loads of students are failing not only because the teachers are bad or their parents aren't trying; sometimes it's due to the overpopulation of a classroom; take, for instance, my school, where we've got over two thousand students.
We do have 120 students in a single classroom and a teacher as to teacher about 8 of such classes, leaving such teachers overwhelmed with work. Now such would hinder the prospect of having a personal teacher-student relationship with all students because the population is too much, and how the government can change such a situation is to erect more classrooms and employ more teachers so the population won't become distractions to students.
In a nutshell, my take is that for a child to succeed, it takes not just the singular effort of the teachers, but that of the child's parents, the child themselves, and possibly the effort of the government, especially in schools with a very large population without enough classrooms. If everything is put in place and everyone plays their role efficiently, then success will ultimately be accomplished.
All photos are mine.