I have been a teacher for 28 years from 1969 to 1997, when I took early medical retirement due to ill-health, severe depression to be exact. It was never the students. It was always management.
My first 2 secondary schools were fabulous but after that it went downhill, with appalling management. There was little support for the ordinary teachers. I loved my students and even after all these years my 5 closest friends are ex-students. In 2 years time I will be 80 years old but I look back on my teaching with great affection for my students and all the joy they gave me even though eventually becoming Head of English at the age of 27, I became part of the management.
My students were everything. I wanted them to aim high, get good qualifications and go far. Many of them did. In those days the students stood up when the teacher came into the classroom. It was a show of justifiable respect. There was no such thing as social media either. There was a positive school culture by the teachers who cared.
I was strict and had discipline in my classrooms and in the corridor. The parents in all these schools accepted my rules because they knew that their children’s education came first. In fact teachers all over the world are devoted to the education of their children, whatever age, because teaching is a vocation like nursing. However it does not mean that they should be badly paid for the wonderful work they do.
Being in a teaching staff room can be one hell of a laugh. You have to have a sense of humour to teach and the students too can make you laugh. I have so many stories about the fun I had with them. In the staff room we would tell stories about the mistakes we made and the funny times we had with our students.
Now the teachers’ union the NASUWT has done a survey and research on attitudes towards teachers by the students and parents. The positive culture that was in schools in my time of teaching has changed. Part of the problem is social media. Young people and their parents are on Facebook and TikTok etc. Due to this, misogyny and racism are now flooding the schools.
A popular divisive influencer is Andrew Tate. He is facing rape charges. He is also facing charges on human trafficking, trafficking minors, sex with a minor, money laundering, and attempting to influence witnesses. He appeared on Big Brother around about 2016 but was removed because he was being investigated by the police. During the show he also put homophobic and racist posts on Twitter. He promotes woman-hatred and calls himself the “king of masculinity” and he is the third most googled person in 2023.
Trump is also a great influence and has his awful attitude towards women.
The teachers’ union has produced this survey of teachers’ experiences at the present time. Many have said that social media is the main cause of bad behaviour of pupils with female teachers suffering the most. One female teacher told the union:
“I have had boys refuse to speak to me, and speak to the male teaching assistant, because I am a woman and they follow Andrew Tate and think he is amazing with all his cars and women and how women should be treated. These were ten-year-olds”
Parents are also a concern as many refuse to accept school rules and do not take responsibility for their children’s behaviour.
I believe that there is a new law coming in which states that teachers will not be allowed to exclude students from the lesson however badly they behave. The teachers are not happy about this and they want parents to uphold the school rules on behaviour or their children could be excluded. The teachers want to be able to come to their school and do their best for the students so they can do well and go on to bigger and better things. I am very proud of one example.
A nursing student began as an SEN, I believe that has gone now and started taking more and more qualifications. She had become a close friend so with every new qualification in nursing, I received a telephone call. She would not come off the phone until I told her how proud I was of her, which , of course, I did readily. When she retired from nursing teaching she had become an associate professor of nursing at a university. She now has a fab pension. This is what teachers do and of course, she became a teacher herself. We start them off in school and then watch them spread their wings and fly.
Girls in schools are also suffering harassment and sexist behaviour and attitudes towards them. The problem is that now a school is not a place of safety. If we do not take this seriously we will end up like the United States with Security guards and X-ray machines to check people and students as they enter the building.
When I talk to teachers today, they admit freely that they are very restricted in how to have discipline in their classes. I was strict and I had my rules which had to be followed. Once the students understood that we could enjoy the lessons together. Now the problem is , I am told, that I would not be able to do that if I were still teaching. They have to follow the curriculum to the letter, no deviation. I could use my imagination with the students but now that could not happen, allegedly.
It seems to me that the parents, teachers, and management of each school should get together and discuss a way forward in the best interests of the students and the toxic environment that exists now in education must be brought to an end, somehow.
