Teacher trouble!

Teachers. A story was forwarded on to me yesterday. The author viewed teachers as no more than mere babysitters. Apparently, teachers are paid an extortionate amount of money for doing nothing more than what a 15 year old does to earn and bit of pocket money.

In my opinion, teachers are more akin to crowd control personnel. All the teachers I know work 10 – 14 hour days. It is certainly true that they have a great deal more holiday than the rest of us 9 to 5ers. But again, the teachers I know spend the majority of it marking or creating lesson plans.

Teachers are the foundation of our society. It is their influence on the future generations that will give us doctors, police officers and Prime Ministers.

In recent years, under the Labour government, bureaucracy has crept into the education system. Teachers no longer have the power to decide the curriculum – there is no encouragement to teach children to think outside the box. In order for schools to win funding, they need to meet government standards, yet this means ticking a whole load of inane boxes. These boxes don’t include teaching anything other than the basics. Children are not pushed to achieve more than the minimum that will lead to some form of employment.

I feel that we will have a generation of young people incapable of using their initiative, terrified of living independently of others because they are so used to being spoon fed.

A standardised curriculum, short working days, and 13 weeks of holiday a year, could a job get any better than this?

According to a report in the Guardian last year, nearly 40% of newly qualified teachers drop out after 6 months. Many teachers have complained that this is due to the conditions under which they work.

This brings me to the case of Peter Harvey, who in a moment of utter madness hit a child over the head with a dumbbell. Firstly, the pupil was waving a Bunsen burner whilst shouting abuse at Harvey. Secondly, what was the teacher doing with a Dumbbell in the classroom. Jokes aside, I do not condone this behaviour, but it is also easy to understand the stress he was under. Children are extremely cruel. I remember a lesson once when a group of girls left a number of tampons dipped in red paint in the classroom. The teacher, after seeing this went bright red with embarrassment, which resulted in the class hurling abuse at him.

Teachers deal with abuse on a regular basis – some more than others. Luckily there are those that are strong enough to persevere with their students in order to create another generation of people who have the desire of improving the conditions of our society.

Considering all the difficulties, the long hours, and constant abuse faced by some from students, I think they do a pretty good job!