In my brief an wretched teaching career, I cheerfully settled for inattentive.

Perhaps because the teacher had to work twice as hard to catch you being quietly inattentive?

Younger Brother

As I have demonstrated in my very-locked entries, some elementary teachers are nothing but control freaks, and dim ones at that.

I would like to think that they brought this up at their Faculty Meetings ("this policy makes no sense, we can't even explain it to the students"). But I live in hope.

And, again, this was 35+ years ago (but it clearly made an impression on me!).

Insofar as it makes any sense at all (which it may not), it could make sense on the theory that one can BE inattentive much more often than one is CAUGHT being inattentive. Kids who are only slightly sneaky would probably get caught 1 out of 4 times they are quietly inattentive...so it would work out to a half-point offense. (A very sneaky kid might only get caught 1 time in 8, making in a quarter-point offense.) It works out to a bit of incentive to be quietly inattentive rather than disruptive, on top of the incentives not to do either.

Many authority figures don't like talking about harm-reduction strategies too openly. They seem to think it reduces their authority and makes those under authority less compliant. It's also possible that the infraction-point system was designed by different people than those implementing it and talking to you.

• a kid is disruptive in class, that is not the teachers fault ( except that some super teachers manage to get them quiet sometimes)

however

• if a kid is (quietly) inattentive then the presumption is, that the teacher failed to make his subject interesting.

As teacher one wants to discourage the latter idea.

• I am cynical.
• I originally studied to become a teacher.
• I was often inattentive (as a pupil) because I was easily bored ( and possibly had ADD but nobody knew about that back then )

Edited at 2010-10-07 09:35 pm (UTC)