Michael Blumenthal's essay, A Letter to My Students, illustrates the way a teacher’s love for his or her’s students hinders the students rather than helps the students. The teacher’s “love” leads to coddling that protects a student from constructive criticism which leads to deceit of the quality of a student’s work. Teachers, and students alike, should expect respect rather than love within a class to keep a professional environment that will better help the students and their work. It is a teacher’s job to teach and better students, and when a teacher loves their students it creates a deceitfulness that protects their students from needed criticism. As Blumenthal said, it would be like being “handed a seat in the orchestra, endowed with a …show more content…
The millennials have lost their competitiveness, they have been told they can be anything they want to be and they can do anything they want to do which is not true. This stems from the deceitfulness that Blumenthal talks about in his essay. This coddling is creating a generation that can't handle criticism. This is dangerous because criticism is vital in education, because it creates better writers, actors, doctors, lawyers, …show more content…
Two of my directors were at the same school and liked to use a tag team form of constructive criticism. One would tell you what you were doing wrong (whether in public or private it did not matter to her), and the other would tell you how to fix it and would remind you of your talent. It was a process that worked well in that department and allowed the students to grow. It was a great balance between coddling and criticism. It was the respect Blumenthal talks about that allows students to learn and grow and become better. The other director who I had the privilege of working with is very similar to the teacher Blumenthal uses as an example in the first few paragraphs of his essay. She loved her students dearly and it showed to outsiders and the students. She's a great teacher, but what a few of us students struggled with was how she coddled us. I personally, am not fond of being coddled, would rather have the cold hard truth. To have a teacher that coddled her students drove me crazy because I was constantly wondering what am I doing wrong and right? Or am I growing as an actor? I wasn't the only one who felt this way, there were two others, but the rest of the students in our department felt like they needed a space free of criticism and the theatre was that space. It was infuriating. I wanted to be told whether I sucked or if I was doing good.