The Dependence Of Future Of A Person On If He Was Successful Or Not In The Past

In the article entitled “how teachers can help students who fail in class to succeed at life” by Mark Katz, the writer is discussing an issue which is that it is not a must that failing at school means failing in life explaining that there are a lot of people who had gone through difficulties at school and became successful people now. He added that there are a lot of misperceptions that can affect the kids at school negatively like people who are academically good are smart and the rest are not. Katz also mentioned several ways teachers should follow to help children who face problems or difficulties at school overcome them as encouraging the kids to speak out, encourage their talents, creating a peaceful environment to them, reward struggle as well as achievement and others.

In my opinion, I totally agree with the author as teachers have a great role in shaping the children personality and helping them out through many things. But in our society, this is not applied as we do not have the culture of dealing with children at schools. In Egypt we do not have the culture of how to deal with students at school in a proper way, for example, if a child has some difficulties at school either social or educational, he is considered to be as a loser and the teachers do not take any actions to help, but instead they mistreat him. 3 years ago, a teacher killed a student out of beating because he forgot to do his homework and all that was done to her was a suspension by the ministry of education in addition to similar incidents that happen every day, especially in public schools. Sadly, most Arabs think that beating children is the best way to teach them the differences between right and wrong, and although they see that this strategy is only bringing up disturbed people with psychological issues, they never stopped, that is because we do not have enough awareness towards these issues.

According to an article written by the daily mail, online newspaper, attacks and physical abuse on children increased by 55 percent compared with the average over the previous three years in Egypt, according to statistics made by the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood. Moreover, teachers kill the self-confidence and esteem in students by not allowing them to speak out or say their opinion in anything because in our culture this is called misbehaving. Consequently, all of these factors create a tensioned environment at school that negatively affect students especially students who face difficulties. According to an article entitled “school climate” written by the “National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environment” that researches show that the school environment is tied with school achievement as schools with good climate have shown high test scores and graduation rates, on the other hand, schools with negative school climate is linked to lower student achievement and graduation rates, and it creates opportunities and chances for bullying, violence, and even suicide.

When I was young I was actually introvert. I didn’t like socializing with people and I had no friends, besides, I felt that school was like a prison to me that is why I always got low grades and was not popular, but this all had changed, when one year my science teacher noticed my problem and how isolated I was, she started to encourage me to do better, even if I failed she appreciated my effort and how I tried, until I changed from an unsuccessful person to a successful one. This teacher did not only change my life but what I found out recently while I was having a conversation with my school friends that she positively affected their lives too and gave each one of them perfect solutions to their problems. Now I am a music instructor at the Cairo Opera House and I deal with my students the same way this teacher once dealt with me and happily I am seeing practically how I am helping them as she also did. I learned from this experience that there are two main factors that affect the student which are; the school climate and how teachers deal with students. Those two factors either bring up healthy and successful people who can deal with life with all its difficulties or an isolated person who is afraid to face his future and what is coming up.

To sum up, the school environment is one of the most important things because students spend about 14 years of their lives at school. Those years are the most important years in the life of any person because, children at that age are flexible like dough, the climate around them and the way people deal with them shape their personality in addition to the way they think and act.

In my opinion teachers should undergo professional training on how to deal with students in addition to being supervised to see if they are applying what they learned from the training or not because, the problem of the Egyptian schools or specifically the public ones is that teachers know that they are not under an actual supervision even if they are told so from the ministry of education so they do what they want. I see that the ministry of education should put strict rules to punish any teacher who mistreats a student or does not do his work to the fullest. When we look at the top five education systems in the world we will find South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Finland. and why is that? Simply because these countries changed their way of thinking towards education systems. They discovered that a happy student is a successful one. So, no confusing exams. No tiering, boring home works. Only learning by experimenting and trial and error. Not excluding having fun through it all. Students in those countries cannot wait to wake up every morning to go to school. I hope this will happen in our developed countries someday.