I wanted to be a teacher

When I was young, I wanted to be a teacher. At that time, my Chinese teacher Xu Xiaohua was very kind to me just like my mother. She praised me a lot for my hard work and excellent performance, which inspired my passion in learning and school life. My first responce to the question 'Hey girl, what's your dream?'  was I want to be a teacher like her. Later I changed this answer into a painter when I was interested in painting, then a writer when my article was praised and showed to the whole class. When I was 18, I entered Henan Normal University to learn English as my major. People would say 'Oh, so you're going to be an English teacher after graduation, right?' once they got to know this fact. I forced a smile everytime when I heard this and told them there were many choices for English major students after their graduation. It was not because I was unwilling to be an English teaher anymore but I started to realize that to be a good English teacher is a very difficult thing which requires professional language knowledge, rich experience, extended horizon and enduring patience. Now I doubt myself if I can meet all these requirements and sacrifice my whole life to stand on the platform and watch my students come and leave for their own destinations every year while I can do nothing but grow older. Well, maybe I am being a little pessimistic but that's what I can imagine if my future is to stand there all the time.

After a year of my MA school life, I understand deeply that education is the tool of social hierarchy. Children from top class posess the best education resource in the world. Children who want to change their fate have to study hard to squeeze into top universities only to find they have nothing to compete with others except their desires want to be better. That's why the article called 'I entered 985/211 universities only found that I actually have nothing to be proud of.' is shared again and again on our moments. Many of my classmates said that they felt the same way but they were depressed and powerless about this situation. BBC has a documentary called 'Seven years' which is about the fixed social hierarchy and fate, there is only one child who changed his destiny from the bottom of life to successful businessman through good education in Harvard. It seems that education is the only way we keep or change our life. However, many young students have no idea about this truth at all even if their teacher told them to study hard time after time. Many teachers become numb and dissapointed but they can do nothing to change those phubbing students. That's another reason I changed my mind to stop dreaming of being a teacher. I strongly believe that knowledge is learned and acquired, not taught. The best way of learning is self-teaching and developing metacognitive abilities to monitor one's own learning. Activate one's desire and passion of learning is the most important task teachers should do but most teachers overlook this and keep duck-stuffing their students untill they lose the interest of learning. It's the saddest story of education but it is common in China.