Here’s a secret: the real reason why teaching is falling apart in this country.
Reams of copy have been spent decrying housing shortages, prohibitively expensive rents, struggles to acquire contracts, SNA reductions making the job unsustainable.
These are all adjacent issues. They don’t address the root of the issue.
The problem is ultimately cultural, not systemic; so, solving it cannot be achieved through government intervention or through straw-man resolutions that’ll make the sitting minister for education feel that they’ve “done something”.
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Secrets, even open ones, conceal truths, and the important truths are inevitably hurtful.
The truth is, teachers are becoming disenchanted for a few reasons. I’ll lay them out, and if I hurt your feelings, I’m sorry: I can’t read another article or letter to the editor that misses the point.
Since the advent of smartphones, children’s general level of intelligence and attention spans have plummeted. Children now are broadly apathetic, which creates behaviours that the modern parent doesn’t want to deal with. I had a parent say to me once that they weren’t going to lean on their child and make them study as they didn’t want to damage their relationship with them. In my head I thought: you can be friends with them when they’re an adult – right now, you need to be their parent.
I’m not a parent, so I don’t pass judgment on those who are tired and put a screen in front of their children. But that doesn’t mean I think they’ve done the right thing. Parenting is a job: don’t sign up for it if you’re not going to go the whole hog and do it.
I find that many parents I meet don’t want to go through the awkward situation of being tough on their children and dealing with their bad mood for a while afterwards. In a colleague’s class, a student took umbrage over being reprimanded. They got out of their chair, walked out of the room, exited the front door of the school and sailed past the window on their way home. The parent landed in an hour later to have a set-to. This parent is renowned as “difficult”. The line is “placate them”.
Principals have to deal with parents like this now more than ever before. They don’t feel empowered to support their staff, so staff in turn don’t feel supported; they don’t feel they can do their jobs and discipline students without facing almost immediate consequences or hassle. This student still hasn’t been punished and there’s a standing order to generally give them a wide berth.
All of this has eroded morale.
In the modern classroom, you have to practically break up every lesson with a YouTube video
Permanent teaching jobs can be hard to come by, and the Government has made a nice-sounding effort to remedy this: contracts must be offered after one year’s service. That means that after one year of attempting to make a good impression, a principal has to ask themselves: do I want to be stuck with this person forever, or will I just give them the line that I couldn’t find enough hours for them, and just hire someone else?
I and many teachers I’ve known have been given the revolving door routine. I once lost a job because one parent was very vocal when complaining about me over one incident, in spite of all the positive work and relationships I’d cultivated.
When you were in school, every once in a while, your teacher would roll in the TV on wheels. You cheered; they were a hero; a class off to relax a bit. Songs would be written about this day.
In the modern classroom, you have to practically break up every lesson with a YouTube video. The modern student doesn’t cheer, though; they groan. They’ve been so desensitised by their exposure to online content that nothing moves them any more. They’ve lost their emotional, empathetic capacities, which in turn hurts their creative and intellectual potential. Students don’t have opinions any more. You just have to tell them what to say in their exam. It’s dispiriting. I don’t feel that I teach any more; I talk.
Education comes from the Latin word, educo, “to lead forth”. That grand enterprise is over.
Many teachers are becoming disillusioned and leaving for more fulfilling, lucrative careers. The job used to be its own reward. It’s not now.
Culturally, we need to change. And I don’t mean bring back the priests, the flogging and the lump of turf for the class fire. Parents need to start doing their jobs (some do, and I truly thank you for your service) and principals need to be entrusted to do their job.
There used to be that old chestnut that parents gave schools their most precious asset. I know that’s crude materialist language, but there’s sense to it. We can do a good job when we’re allowed to do it. We’re not concerned with being the students’ friends. We can be encouraging and reproving as needed, and if the student wants to praise or lambast us at the dinner table that evening, you, dear parent, can listen and nod along and be glad that we’re taking the brunt of the outrage on your behalf.
I would like to keep teaching, but not like this.
I can’t keep second-guessing my every decision, worried that a phone call from a parent or a visit to the principal’s office is waiting for me at the end of the day.
