Is teaching a lost profession today?

Once upon a time... teaching was a much-revered profession. Teachers were seen as community leaders, shining examples of modesty, knowledge, understanding, enthusiasm and resilience. The perfect role models for our children to aspire to, and to aspire to be.

Sadly, today, teaching has changed, and while teachers are still appreciated in our societies and communities, teaching, as a profession, is just a shadow of what it once was.

Once a profession, a vocation, a job for life, teachers are deserting the classroom in droves as disillusion overtakes dedication, as pupil and student misbehaviour becomes much more of an issue, as parental discussions become much more about what schools and teachers are ‘not’ doing, and as teachers find themselves unable to be inspirational due to the inability of educational authorities to recognise the extent of change within the teaching and learning dynamic.

So, let’s look at those three elements of education in isolation, and see just what has changed.

Behaviour in the classroom has changed, as I believe, students are frustrated with being unable to utilise all the technological benefits that are pushing societies along at amazing speed.

Today, we have the Internet, and Google, and Artificial Intelligence, and all the kids know how to access and use it all, many better than their teachers, but they are not allowed! So, a generation now goes to school with a ‘chip on their shoulders,’ a reason to be uncooperative, and to seek fault in their teachers, rather than embracing the teacher’s mission, to inspire them.

This creates what researchers are calling educational delinquency among learners. It’s little more than a natural response, to be naughty, disruptive, and mischievous, disrupting the norms of the classroom with tardiness, talking out of turn, giggling, throwing things, idleness, and attention-seeking. Now, none of these, alone, are significant issues for an experienced and confident teacher, but with multiplicity, come problems.

The classroom can change very quickly, as misbehaviour, unchecked, disrupts the learning process, not only for the teacher but for the 80 per cent of the class that is there to learn. The other 20 per cent have just become an anarchist presence, and ‘getting the class back,’ from there is never simple.

Parent/teacher conferences and discussions have always been an opportunity for parents to learn what has been going well, and not so well at school, and how they can help the teachers. Simple stuff really.

However, since the pandemic, teachers have become the target of significant aggression by parents who seem to believe that their angelic children at home, can be less than perfect in school. Really? No. They are just in denial! They learned during the online home schooling phase just how their children really were for their teachers, but they will never admit they could have done more, preferring to ‘double-down’ and put teachers under even more pressure.

The reality is that kids were finding ways to be there, yet not there online. They were able to split screen and find what they needed through Google. They were miles in front of their teachers, and their parents turned a ‘blind eye,’ because it made their lives easier during a time of turmoil and uncertainty. So, ‘everything’ is the teacher’s fault.

Teachers, poorly rewarded for what they do achieve, under the most trying of circumstances, must cope with delinquent learners, bullying parents, and educational authorities who have either forgotten, or never knew in the first place that teaching is more than imparting knowledge, but about inspiring change, and much more than facts and information, but very much more about acquiring knowledge and understanding. And yet, all over the world, students must hand write answers to impossible questions... In terms of teaching and learning, we are falling back into the dark ages, when we should be shooting for the stars.

So, teachers are leaving the profession. But at least they are protecting their health and wellbeing, because who needs the twin spectres of bullying and harassment in their lives every day? Many more are saying...Not me.