Teachers' Salaries Linked With Students' Evaluation Nowadays, people tend to break thetraditional absolute authority of teachers and grant students more freedom, whichmakes the classroom more liberal and democratic. In some pilot programs,teachers' salaries are linked with students' evaluation.

While this is without doubt a good attempt,it seems to have gone too far. As I see it, students' evaluation is not a reliablecriterion to judge teaching quality and overemphasis on the evaluation maycause difficulties on the teachers' side. To start with, students' evaluationis far less than accurate. Hence linking the evaluation directly with teachers'salaries is not appropriate. Generally speaking, it is very difficult forstudents to evaluate their teachers fairly and objectively. Not beingeducational experts, students' evaluation is solely based on how they feelabout the teachers: Is this teacher friendly to the students? Is he too strictand most importantly, is he likely to give a high score to a particularstudent? Such evaluation is highly subjective, unprofessional and unreasonable.A teacher may receive less salary because he is so responsible for his coursethat he has failed a couple of students in the exam. Apparently, such evaluationsystem is not fair when seen from the aspect of the students' immaturejudgment. Additionally, such system actually does no good to students. Everyteacher has his own teaching plan and teaching style. We cannot expect teachersto make every student pleased and satisfied, because one man's meat can beanother man's poison.

However, under such evaluation mechanism,students are given too much power which they do not know how to exercisewisely. Students tend to blame the teacher--not themselves or the courses--oncethey feel unhappy about their study. And it is likely that some students willabuse their power to vent off such unhappiness by giving unreasonably lowscores to their teachers in the evaluation. In this case, teachers may losetheir initiatives in teaching, and be forced to please their students, whichwill lead to the deterioration of teaching quality. Therefore, such evaluationsystem is not good for students.

Giving students more freedom is advisable.But before rushing into implementing new rules, we should always consider thepossible outcomes. Linking teachers' salaries with students' evaluation mayseem a good idea at the first glance, but actually it will affect the teachingquality by giving too, much power to educational amateurs.