There is a well-known Chinese saying which translates into English as “Strict teachers produce outstanding students”. What is your opinion? Write an essay giving three reasons to support your views on the saying. Provide a suitable title for your essay.
Strict teachers are the nightmare of students
There is a growing number of people, especially parents holding a strong belief in a famous Chinese idiom “Strict teachers produce outstanding students”. They think that strict teachers help a lot in pushing students to strive for excellence. Indeed, what they trust, to a certain extent, is correct. However, our society nowadays requires graduates who are not only knowledgeable in academic fields, but also possessing good personalities. Can strict teachers produce students of such wonderful qualities? The answer is definitely no.
First and foremost, strict teachers make students afraid of making attempts and mistakes, thus leading to their loss of opportunities to learn. As we all know, strict teachers usually set extremely tight requirements for students, warning them of possible harsh punishment. Consequently, to avoid doing things wrongly and receiving punitive actions, students choose to give up chances of fighting against academic difficulties. For instance, it is reported that a strict teacher in Mainland China ridiculously charges students fines because of their unsatisfactory performance. Eventually, students escape from attending tests and exams to eliminate the risks of losing money. Based on this, we can actually see that despite the good aims of teachers to force students to do better, students simply cannot adapt to it and this results in adverse effects. No one will make zero mistakes throughout his or her life, so we should adopt a positive attitude towards mistakes and learn from them. Hence, strict teachers contribute to the decline in students’ confidence of facing challenges and making mistakes, so they learn less.
Besides, students are usually found to be under great stress if he or she is taught by strict teachers, which is obviously not beneficial to students’ health and growth. The reason behind is probably the heavy workload of students given by strict teachers as the latter wants the former to achieve a perfect standard by doing endless practices. Worse still, various punishments are used to ensure students trying their best to score high. Then, students, like sponges that absorb water continuously, receive a lot of pressure exerted by strict teachers, resulting in serious symptoms such as headache and stomachache. Also, psychologically speaking, students may suffer from depression which may tragically lead to suicides. So even if strict teachers can produce students who pass every test with flying colours, these students might not be psychologically healthy with good personalities developed.
Last but not least, it is beyond dispute that the teaching provided by strict teachers worsens the relationship between teachers and students, which stands in the way of maintaining smooth teaching-learning processes. An appropriate example illustrating this point is the prevalence of punishing students with poor academic results physically by strict teachers in the mainland. Therefore, being discontented with the strict teachers’ teaching styles, students there start to create riots during lessons. Lastly, both teaching and learning are badly affected. In fact, it is crucial to sustain a good and harmonious teacher-student relationship, so that teachers can teach effectively while students can learn happily. Nevertheless, we believe that most students naturally cannot tolerate the terrible teaching method of strict teachers, let alone building up good relationship with them. Hence, students may not be able to concentrate and devote all their effort into their studies due to unpleasant learning experience. As a result, they may not excel in the academic field.
To conclude, the old idiom “Strict teachers produce outstanding students” is no longer applicable in the present education system which emphasizes the development of all-round persons. Strict teachers will only cause destruction of students’ confidence in facing challenges, posing heavy pressure for students and worsening the teacher-student relationship. So, rarely will a well-rounded and outstanding student be produced by strict teachers.