Kakashi : Bad Teacher?

Kakashi is one of my favorite characters in the series, even though he hasn't had much to do lately.

I was looking back over the series and I think that Kakashi is actually a pretty bad teacher. I think he's much better suited to leading missions than to being responsible for training ninjas. Let's look at what he did with team 7 :

Naruto - Basically didn't teach him anything, Naruto's progress has been more or less due to his personal ambition and rivalry with Sasuke. I think the funniest thing Kakashi taught Naruto was the 1000 years of pain, I about died when he did that to Gaara! Lol.

Sakura - Wow. Absolutely nothing.

Sasuke - Indisputably his best work was done with Sasuke, which is also a huge problem. You think he would have noticed Sasuke's severe mental problems, and dangerous obsession with Itachi. Instead of mentally mentoring Sasuke and strengthening his moral character, he teaches him an effectively useless (against Itachi) assassination jutsu. Sasuke needs to learn genjutsu defenses and possibly summons (like the dogs Kakashi brought against Zabuza!). Not only does his work with Sasuke seem to be narrow-minded, he also does this to the exclusion of Sakura and Naruto.

To be fair, Kakashi's past is pretty twisted, and he probably wasn't thrilled at the idea of having to deal with kids (he never passed any of his previous candidates, apparently).

I would have loved to see Sasuke/Sakura/Naruto's development had they been given Gai as a sensei. I'm sure Gai would have forced Naruto to develop some serious taijutsu instead of relying upon contant Kage Bunshin + basic punch/kick. And Sakura probably would have had to get serious as well. Sasuke arguably wouldn't have been any better off with Gai, but I don't think he would have suffered from it either.

Thoughts?

Kakashi is badass. Stop bashing him.

He IS [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img] I'm not denying that. I'm not really bashing him, I just think he's a much better fighter than a teacher.

Who cares? Isn't it better that you develop your skills through your own methods rather than by someone else's? Look at Naruto's Rasengan. It's not the same style as Jiraiya's, but his own style still gets the job done.

Pffft Gai sucks as a teacher worst then Kakashi. I mean come on what type of teacher teaches one of their students a move that's meant to beat the other one? Not to mention Gai abandoned Neji during the Chuunin exam forcing hum to train with TenTen instead.

Naruto wouldn't have developed his Rasengan without Jiraiya's help. That's the whole point of having teachers : to help the students grow in different areas, such as knowledge, patience, ethics, etc.

EDIT: Aeon : Yeah, as far as Gai focusing on Lee, I agree that is wrong for a teacher to do.

all kakashi does is teach them areas they need teaching in... and he admits his weaknesses. He says there is nothing he can teach sakura. He sees they are lacking in chakra control, so he goes over the walking exercise. He sees naruto needs tutoring, so he does just that, and he notices sasuke needs speed... so he works on that, the Chidori was meant for gaara anyways, not itachi.

Granted, he should have taught naruto more about strategies and MUCH more chakra control and stuff... but what can he do about that? Other than more jutsus...
and he should have taught sakura ...something... anything really... and more about the sharingan to sasuke... because in all honesty, what does sasuke know?

Well, other than that, Kakashi has been pretty busy in a way. He can't really teach if the team is in the middle of a mission (although some of them are just plain RIDICULOUS), concentrated on Sasuke for the Chuunin exam, was taken out by Itachi and in a coma, then had to go on a mission after he was healed.

kakashi plays favorites, just like gai
there's no shame in that

i have to agree with MemCat, but not Gai, he's not too great either, i have to go with team #10 that's the beard guy, ino shikamaru and chouji's teacher, he let his student go with thier own bloodline special skill, ino bloodline of spy, chouji's bloodline of fat and power, shikamaru bloodline of what u call it, "shadow" thing.

Kakashi doesn't do any of those, he should of taught sasuke with his red eyes thing, and naruto should be taught something within like the 4th hokage and he should send sakura back to soap opera with her crying #@^*&.

asuma is biased against chouji though, even though he was finding faults in all 3 of them, he singled chouji out as the one who was the biggest disappointment.

kurenai is probably the fairest among all the senseis

But then again, we haven't seen how Kurenai taught her team. The only thing I remember about her comments on her team is all about Kiba's techinques during the Naruto vs Kiba fight.

The only thing he really brought to the team was trying to teach them teamwork.. Pretty much the whole first arc was about that. Other than that, yeah, he mainly focused on Sasuke and let Jiraiya take Naruto - which, I believe, was a good decision.

Sakura just stayed home and played with flowers, or something. "Training to be a woman" as they called it..

I can't say that any of them are bad teachers.

Sure, kakashi was a better fit for sasuke than naruto. But at the same time he taught Naruto some chakra control, he found another tutor when he was going to be focusing on sasuke, he did genjutsu training with Sakura. The training before the second chuunin exam didn't pay attention to Sakura, because she wasn't IN the second chuunin exams, she'd already been eliminated.

That said, it's understood that you're responsible for your own training. That's why Asuma didn't know how far Chouji came, because Chouji's training was generally private and self-disciplined. Similarly, Kurenai didn't really have to do a whole lot in training her team, because quite frankly hinata, kiba, and shino all already knew exactly what they needed to work on.

"Teacher" is probably the wrong word for what the team jounins were doing. I think it'd be more accurate to think of them as Personal Trainers.

its not kakashi's fault that his team is a bunch of newbs.

I think its not as much teacher, but just to be a squad leader on missions to give them real world experience and to prepare them for tasks ahead in life. I dont think it should be up to them to teach them new techniques unless they see them fit for it. Think of it more as a mentor to help them on their path towards their own self discovery of who they are. Of course Gai and Lee, thats a little different. Just my 2 cents.

Yes, I agree that Kakashi isn't that well of a "teacher". I think complich8 assumtion that they are personal trainers is more accurate than teachers. The genin seem to have their own "freestyle" jutsus that they use and they are all unique.

The jounin do play favorites though; I think Kakashi takes a liking to Sasuke because he was best friends with a Uchiha.

Kakashi didn't teach the team a lot of individual skills. He taught them all that teamwork was the key to succeeding as a ninja. He taught them charkra control, tree climbing. He told Sakura that she had to care for the whole team not judt Sasuke. He kept telling Sasuke there were other ways to live than jsut revenge/hate. He told Naruto that he had to start thinking, not just rush in but observe and plan ahead.

All of them learned these and more from him but as we have seen they don't always put high stock in it.

ie Naruto still rushes in, Sakura still whines and crys about Sasuke and treats Naruto like crap, Sasuke ran off to get power from Oro and kill Itachi.

IMO Kakashi is a good teacher, he jsut didn't take the time to really develope them, he rather pointed out what to work on and then let them work on it.

I forget but in some ep, he comments on how amazed he is at how far Naruto got better on his own.

I also think Kakashi was a very good teacher.

He got the 3 when they were wet behind the ear n00bs.
From teh beggining he had them work on the basics that they needed and a little bit of teamwork.
He is not qualified to look over/train Naruto because Naruto neesds to be protected from Atasuki
Likewise, he is the ONLY one qualified to teach sasuke b/c of his sharingan.
although ill agree, Sakura kinda got shafted.

finally they aren't a normal team and Kakashi as a teacher can't be judged based on a normal team,
sasuke IS the last Uchiha, and Naruto is the Kyubi kid

kakashi is badass thats all we need to know/care about, are you guys really gonna analyze the best character's teaching skills rofl.