[WS:] Absolutely. Learning is an interactive process that involves the learner, the teacher and the social environment in which the learning takes place. I spent my entire adult life in educational institutions of one sort or another, either as a student or as a teacher, and from that experience I can tell that *the* most important element of a successful learning experience is a good interpersonal relationship between the learner and the teacher. However, establishing that relationship depends on the social environment of the learner and the student - which I can illustrate with a personal example.
When I was in high school, my "helicopter" parents traveled overseas on business, and I was raised by my grandparents for whom I could do no wrong. I used this newly discovered freedom to test the limits how far I can go, and I associated myself with the neighborhood thugs in a way as in the flick "This is England" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_England. I was a nerdy kid often shunned by popular kids, so being, or rather acting like a thug was a sort of vindication. Acting out the "thug role" had a significant impact on my academic performance - to make a long story short I made a conscious effort to be the most disruptive kid and collect the greatest number of failing grades in the entire school. My efforts were recognized and I was slated for expulsion, which meant the definitive end of my academic career due to the "tracking" system that Poland, as most other European countries used. however, my parents made a deal with the principal that I would be home schooled overseas, where my parents lived, for a year and then come back for the senior year to be able to graduate.
After my return, I started hanging out with a different crowd - counter-cultural nerds interested in poetry, philosophy, arts, alternative life styles etc. This again had a significant impact on my academic performance. No, I did not become a "good student" - toeing the line and jumping the hoops when told, which plays an important part in scholastic life, was more than I could take. I was still a trouble maker, but of a different kind than before. Instead of an aspiring thug, I became an aspiring counter-cultural intellectual. In practical terms, this meant reading "controversial" books and then using this newly acquired knowledge to challenge the conventional wisdom of the teachers. Consequently, I was able to graduate with decent grades, but as my final act of defiance I switched my tracking from science leading to a technical university to philosophy and a liberal arts college.
In sum, the teachers were a constant in my high school career - pretty much the same set in my senior year as in my freshman year. Therefore, their teaching quality cannot explain the change I underwent - from a slated for expulsion thug to a candidate accepted to an elite liberal arts college. What changed was my social environment, which had a significant impact on what is called "availability for instruction" - which can satisfactorily explain the change in my educational outcomes.
The main problem with the American educational system is that this relational character of the learning process is not recognized and acknowledged, at least officially. The chief reasons are, of course, political: creating favorable environment for the testing-credentialing industry and privatization of public services, managerial control of the workforce, teacher unions busting, and covering up dysfunctional aspects of social life in this country. But these politically motivated efforts would not succeed without two central features of the American popular culture: aspirational individualism and compulsive managerialism. Aspirational individualism stresses the centrality of the individual as the focus of virtually every aspect of human life, which stipulated the moral imperative to "free" individual from the "constraining influence" of the collective. Compulsive managerialism is the tacit assumption that all life problems can be solved if they are properly managed by motivated, gung-ho, can-do, entrepreneurial individuals.
Viewed through the lenses of these two cultural biases - aspirtational individualism and compulsive managerialism - learning ceases to be a relationship between two equally involved and collaborating partners and their environment, the student and the teacher, and becomes instead a technical management problem in which the student becomes a passive material shaped by the teacher, and the outcome of this process is solely decided by the managerial skills of the teacher. This perception of the learning process dove-tails the political agendas of many social forces in the US whose interests otherwise diverge: privatizers and teacher union busters who sell their agenda as steps to improve the technical skills of teachers-managers, school administration that sells their effort to control workforce as means to improve technical quality of instruction, and parents and their advocates who blame teachers and schools for the failures of their children and to absolve themselves from the responsibility for their children's educational achievements.
Therefore, resisting on educational "reforms" that center on "improving" or otherwise disciplining teachers is an uphill battle in this country that goes against not only powerful business interests, but popular perceptions as well.
Wojtek