Friday, May 20, 2011

Why we hate principles

"Why We Hate School Principals: Every adult remembers being a child who was afraid of getting sent to the principal's office. It may have felt like the principal was out to get you ... but only if you misbehaved. Take for example Principal Ed Rooney in Ferris Bueller's Day Off He tried to keep high school student Ferris Bueller from playing hookie. Why did he make it his life's mission to get Ferris back to the classroom. You would have thought he'd be happy to have this troublemaker out of his hair."


From Most hated professions.


I am sure that there are people who disliked their principles because they were authority figures. Personally, I got along with most of my authority figures. Of course it was upsetting to be called out in band class for making a mistake or to have my math teacher ask me why I nearly fell asleep in class, but these experiences point toward the position of an educator. It is their job to point out mistakes and encourage improvement.

The principle on the other hand, I hated. Why did I hate the principle? Because he was stupid. This was not the case at all my schools, I am thinking of high school particularly. I went to a good school. I didn't know it at the time but we had a lot that other schools didn't have. The honours program and specific teachers who helped you through scholarship applications and university choices, a fantastic band program, and well-funded science classes, among other things. The principle was dead set on messing all this up. Every decision they made was out of line with what was good about the school, what the students valued, and so on. The honours program was changed because it was discriminatory. The music program was cut so that we could have more soccer. There were 900 students in the music program. That is a sizable portion of the school, many more then can fit onto a soccer team.

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