Sir, – Teaching is one of the few professions where those who provide the service are paid less than those who administer it. Hence, I have some sympathy with teachers when they have a grievance.
Traditionally, teaching has been seen as a noble profession with its main focus on the development of young minds through the teacher’s own example and through an imaginative engagement with the great traditions of knowledge and inquiry.
Teaching was once essentially construed as a moral exercise initiating students into those aspects of our way of life that provided them with the confidence to feel at home in the world and live a life that is worth living.
Teaching has been gradually hijacked by various passing pedagogical wheezes – often the fruits of government trips abroad to see how effectively things get done in various distant parts of the world.
The latest infatuation is with the Shanghai approach to teaching mathematics, without any reference to the context in which this has been developed.
The autonomy of the profession has been steadily undermined; education is now a commodity crudely construed as a means to achieving society’s ends, however vaguely determined.
We have become trapped in a crass materialist view of human nature and of what counts as human flourishing. Teachers have little say in determining the content of the school curriculum.
We are flooded with managerial jargon inappropriately poached from industry.
The language of objectives, targets and outcomes has dimmed the light of common sense.
A good friend of mine, and an excellent teacher, was recently constrained to attend a day’s training in “instructional scaffolding”.
Much as I respect the building trade, it would not be my first port of call in searching for an appropriate metaphor to enlighten the lives of teachers. – Yours, etc,
PHILIP O’NEILL,
Oxford.