I know at least one of my followers is a teacher – so she will understand what I mean. Why is it, some teachers feel negative reinforcement is is the way to motivate someone? Personally I feel, if you tell someone they’re crap at something for long enough and often enough, they’ll believe you and stop trying.
Case in point. One of our authors is a college student, studying a rather eclectic mix of subjects which happens to include creative writing. She is a published author, with two novels out there as well as several short stories in her chosen genre. For someone, as young as she is, I regard her as real and rare talent achieving a level of maturity and character development rarely seen at her age. (Her work is also published elsewhere, not just with us, so I’m not simply bigging up one of our own).
Her creative writing tutor though, clearly does not share this opinion – she comes down hard on the young lady, and belittles and rubbishes virtually everything she does. Okay, part of that is to shake her out of her comfort zone, and partly, like all of us, we write best in our own genre or genres, but having her almost sobbing on line to me last night was pushing it. Her boyfriend sums it up, “don’t stress it – she’s just jealous – you’re published and she’s not”. I have to say listening last night made me wonder along these lines too.
We all react better to constructive criticism – so why do some, by no means all, I’m not generalising here, some teachers and tutors go so far the other way.
I don't understand the mindset either,D avid. I've always thought a teacher's role is to guide and motivate,and if we can actually inspire someone, so much the better. There's a difference between being a tough, demanding teacher and trashing a student's confidence, but it seems a lot of teachers, especially writing teachers, don't see this. It's a shame.
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