"All teachers teach and all students learn. The problem is there often is no relationship between what is taught and what is learned. "
That is not at all true, unless you mean the teacher is "teaching" that he don't care a bit about rather a student learns anything or not! Or the fact that he doesn't know what he is teaching himself!! I have seen several of those teaching teachers!
I went to a tech collage years ago with the worst instructor I ever saw! Body shop.
He did not TEACH, he said this is how to do something and showed us (sometimes). Then just walked by and shook his head watching students that did not get it. Then he went to a side corner of the classroom and tried to braze a crack in a cast iron engine block all day long. Or using schools gas to cut steel yard oraments!! That is not teaching!
For example, welding with an oxy/actelene torch. I knew how just fine myself, been doing it for years. Guy behind me was shooting sparks down my back for days, teacher just walked by looking at the guy popping the weld puddle and shook his head like "He'll never get it". Never even tried to teach him how to weld, just went off and brazed the cast iron block some more. Finnally after about a week of hot sparks down my back I popped of at the guy (thinking him to be doing it on purpose) and he said he didn't know why it was happening. I showed him how to hold the torch properly at an angle and he never did it again, turned out to be one of the best in the class till he dropped out.
The teacher was NOT teaching, he was not doing his job at all in this or about 200 other things!!
And as far as the cast iron engine block he was brazing, he didn't know the first thing about that either!! The crack was about 2" when he started and about 6" when he finnally gave up, and he seemed ticked off at me when I told him he needed to drill a hole at each end of the crack to stop the crack from spreading before heating the block anyway. I don't make a habbit of brazing cast iron, but even I know that and also it needs to be pre-heated to prevent cracks/breaking caused by uneven heating.
In a class that started with about 18 students I think 3 maybe 5 actually graduated, a few dropped out because of the instructer not teaching anything. Others just did not learn anything because the instructor did not teach anything. Most of the ones that did learn anything at all only learned because of 2 other older students and myself taught them what they learned. The 3 of us were experienced with most of everything anyway, and what one of us was short on another knew well. One guy was a pretty good body man out of work on welfare with a baby on the way, he took the class because welfare gave him a choice of get a job, go to school, or lose the checks, and he needed the medical for the baby too. I took the class to hone my skills in working sheet metal for custom work (which was never covered at all, instructor was a buy new parts type person, forget repairs), and the third guy wanted free use of the shop to rebuild a car and do a few paint jobs, also to buy alot of Snap-on tools at half price, the discount that was givin to students of the class by Snap-on. What he saved on the tools he bought paid the cost of the class and more!!! He bought nearly a full shop worth!
The 3 of us were the teachers in that class for those that learned anything.
The instructer was so poor he even could not understand that mixing "one part paint to one part reducer to half part hardner" was NOT the same as mixing 1 quart paint to 1 quart reducer to 1 quart hardner" when I asked him wich was correct for mixing the paints! The instructions said both and he could not understand the 2 were not the same, of course only one can be correct. He just kept saying they were both correct and a quart is a part, but he could not see that one said mix one quart hardener and the other said mix 1/2 quart hardener!!! DOOR KNOB!! Ya Millhouse, reffering to you!
I had to contact the paint supplier and ask them what was correct, they right away saw the error and said it should be 1 quart paint, 1 quart reducer, 1 pint hardner for the correct mix.
He did not know why I cleaned 2 steel nuts very well and put them in my paint gun cup when doing a custom heavy metalic paint job. Duh, the metal flakes are heavy and settle to the bottom while painting, shaking the gun with the nuts in the paint stirs the metal back into the paint for an even metalic paint job. Otherwise you start with a nice heavy metalic and end with plain paint by the time your done.
That was a teacher that did not teach! He was ready to retire anytime he wanted to and just did his own thing while drawing his paycheck, all the time reffering to how great he was at everything and how well he was respected among local shops and such.
No some teachers do not teach, Gateway tech collage bodyshop, Millhouse the instructor, Racine, WI. is perfect example!!! That was sometime in the early or mid 90's hopefully he retired the next year for future students sakes!!!
Real nice guy, the worst teacher though!! That includes the estimating class also! He was wrong several times about writting estimates using the book times, he was adding things that should not be added for various work and such.
That's my rant. And advise if you plan to take a body shop class, if he is still teaching after all these years, find a different class or school and avoid his!!
