Teachers

Wednesday 6th June

Teachers…we all remember teachers, don’t we?  The Good, the Bad and the downright Useless.  When I had my sole interview (5 minutes max) with a careers advisor, she said “Go to University, get a degree – and if all else fails, you can always become a teacher.”  As if that was simply a fall-back, not an aspiration.  And guess what? Many of my classmates did just that and became teachers.

And teaching is still almost a despised career, it is not what most kids want to be when they grow up.  Maybe, simply because they disliked or fell out with their teachers.  And yet we need good teachers more than ever.  Our children are our future, and we need them to be taught well, not just stuffed full of facts (as we were) or sat in front of a computer screen.

Funnily enough though, despite 13 weeks holiday a year many teachers seem unhappy, they leave the profession in droves and complain of the long hours and the pressures of the job.  In fact, talking to an ex-teacher recently I related a conversation I had heard on LBC a few years ago.  It was a phone-in about teaching and teacher after teacher phoned in complaining how hard the job was.  Then a call came through “I agree with every caller so far.  I used to be a teacher and left for a job in Private Industry – and guess what?  It was just the same, same pressure, same long hours – but only 4 weeks holiday a year.”  To which the ex-teacher I was talking to said “Yes, but we needed 13 weeks off a year.”

To which the answer obviously is “Don’t we ALL.”

Yes, teachers are underappreciated, but rather than despise them for their long holidays we should be fighting foe longer holidays for all of us. Especially with the new revolution in AI and robotics we should all have far more time NOT working.  Three-day week anyone?