I was attending a seminar when this question was brought up. Should we take our student as our customer?The speaker, a doctorate, opposed strongly to the idea. She mentioned that such concept are very american and used in business corporation, thus we should not run a school like a business entity. A school is a place where not only knowledge is transpired, discipline is also taught and enforced.
My view is that the answer to the question can be either a yes and no.
Yes. Student is our customer.
We teachers need them! Else where will we be?? Similarly, relating it to a business, no customer mean no business. In this context, I do agree, we are providing our service (teaching) to them. Helping them to learn and gain knowledge, a trainer-learner relationship.
No. Student cannot be our customer.
The role of a teacher is never teaching alone. We mould and build student's character too. Punish if we must. Which is more of a parent-child relationship.
I do not question the both side of the answer, which sounds logical. However, I do ponder why this question were surface? Perphaps, many private schools in Singapore are concerned with the number of student they have, which is the more the merrier and I equates that to higher income for them. Therefore, probably why this concept of student being our customer arises. Have anyone heard of a customer being caned or sacked?? I am not sure if such discipline programmes are in place in these institution, but I do hope that there is.
Personally, I feel as an educator and teacher regardless of whether we are in a government or private schools, we should uphold our primary tasks that is
1. To Teach
2. Mould and build responsible furture generations.
Empathy Test. One of the technique learnt during my recent workshop on charactor based discipline.
Ever wonder why certain people feels for the heros in a movies whereas some may feels for the bad guys? This is because there is something in the good and bad guys that individuals can relate to! It can be his own experiences, child hood, beliefs, values and so on. Here is a simple test that you can do to find out how and who your student or child shows their empathy for.
The test: A nuclear missile is gonna hit and wipe out the entire population. There is shelter that can accomodate only 6 persons. Who will you save?
1. A Policeman with a gun.
2. A retired old teacher with long history of asthma.
3. A great super star and enterainer.
4. A Nobel prize peace winner.
5. A reglious teacher.
6. A pregnant woman who was not married.
7. A 8 year old mentally retared boy
8. A father of 3 kids and a sole bread winner in the family.
9. A highly reputed scientist who is also a great inventor of many things
10. An ex-criminal who had turn over a new leaf, he is now rebuilding houses in war torn countries.
What ever the character they chose there is no right or wrong answer, it only reflects how much that character relates to him...
Attended a short talk on Character Based Discipline on Saturday.
It was interesting. Basically the idea was to find out what are the characters of our student and work on a discipline strategy on that particular student. However, I felt that the talk does not really hit the nail on the head. Well probably a few case studies will help...
