Not a teacher-bashing thread at all, but this fascinates me, as I volunteer in a primary school. I don't usually tease children myself, because it's not my way of doing things, but I see that some teachers (especially the older ones) tease and make little digs at individual children all the time, sometimes with a smile, and sometimes totally deadpan, whether they're doing right or wrong; saying things like "Oh, Alex thinks he knows better than everyone else!"; and another time, when Alex wasn't concentrating, the teacher made him run round the classroom before returning to his seat, which Alex did, while sheepishly grinning his head off, probably enjoying being the centre of attention for one minute.
I'm curious: do the teachers who like to tease and jokingly humiliate children consciously pick who they do this with, is it a deliberate strategy? I would imagine that some sensitive children (including me at that age) would cry at being teased like that, but teachers know which ones they are. Is the general view that a little teasing and sarcasm by the adults is good for children? In this climate of parents complaining at the drop of a hat, before I started volunteering I had imagined that teachers don't do it at all; I was almost relieved to see that they do.
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Teasing children: do primary teachers do this selectively?
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letsgomaths · 11/06/2020 12:13
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