Teacher Unappreciation Week - Part 3: Why do you stay?

The above question appeared in a post I wrote about teaching. If you, gentle readers, don’t entirely mind I’ll create a new one based on it.

It is an interesting question, which lends itself to many interpretations. For example, We could go down a philosophical path and wax lyrical on what Heidegger calls ‘thrownness' or about Camus and The Myth of Sisyphus.  However,  I have a hunch that this is not what is intended and I have more than a hunch that I will be the victim of domestic violence if I get ‘all professorial’.  The question  is not so much about wielding bare bodkins, but  more on the lines of “Why would any teacher remain in such an underpaid, grueling and unappreciated profession?” 

Why do teachers stay? Aside from the fact that many don’t (there is a high attrition rate), many of us actually quite like children and enjoy trying to foster their intellectual and even moral development.  Then there are the friendships you make along the way with fellow teachers, parents and other colleagues. Note: I don’t mention love of subject as time and sheer exhaustion generally precludes research and deep reading.

That being said, the hours are long, the pay atrocious and not all students are bundles of utter delight.

Why do you stay?  Well, one answer might be the fact that teachers make a large financial sacrifice to get their jobs. After years of study, there is a natural reluctance to chuck the entire thing in. Sure, some do overcome this inertia and escape into far better paid jobs in, say, human resources or programming but these are the exceptions.      

Another reason why we stay might be exhaustion.  I always think of Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London in this connection.  He was talking about employees performing menial jobs in restaurants, but much the same applies to teachers. Low paid and exploited workers just don’t have the energy to up sticks and start all over again. This is totally unlike the case of tech workers, who feel no compunction about pursuing ever higher salaries.

Then there is something that almost constitutes brainwashing.  We are constantly being told it is our duty to work inhuman hours and - even - to take on tasks that are time consuming, unpaid and unrelated to teaching per se.  We are inundated with paperwork and supervisory tasks … and it is the ‘expectation’ - a loathsome word -  that these will be done even though this means that marking and lesson preparation is relegated to weekends or the wee small hours.  It is expected that a teacher’s free time is entirely disposable and teachers, themselves, expendable. Most fall for this line out of fear for their jobs and performance evaluations and are too shattered and far too timorous  to cast off the mind forged manacles, the rope of sand.    

Teachers need the help of others as they are largely too bone-weary to look after their own interests.  This is not charity, but in the interests of your children and society.  Way back in 1987 Allan Bloom wrote The Closing of the American Mind.  This was to do with the decline in university education but it applies to all teaching.  The door is almost closed, but there may be just a chink of light left.  Please, please give it a good shove and while you are at it certain district offices and offices of education could do with a good kicking. Teachers need to be better paid, less overworked and far more respected.

This is the Day the Banana Slugs Have Their Picnic

“Don’t worry. My husband will do his Hannibal Lecter face. That would keep anyone away”

The client glances at me and quickly looks away slightly ashen. “That would certainly work,” she says. “But that’s just his normal one! Do ‘the face’, Mark.” I comply, assuming a grotesquely sinister half-leer and bulging my eyes. The client has to steady herself. Once recovered, she agrees that ‘the face’ would be a pretty major deterrent and we head off for the shoot.

A few words of explanation might be in order. Although we rarely if ever do location shoots, we have been persuaded to do some fashion photographs for an exceedingly shy would-be model. The venue is a bit of forest near Sacramento. Although private, it is popular with walkers at weekends and the owners don’t think it worthwhile putting fences and signs up. The model will be wearing a slinky evening dress and is very self-conscious. My job is to carry the heavy equipment and to stand guard. Everything set up, I find a moderately comfortable stump near a crossing and start to peruse ‘Foxe's Book of Martyrs’ - perfect reading for an early summer morning. It is midweek, so I don’t think we’ll be disturbed. It soon transpires that I was wrong. After twenty minutes or so, a couple of dedicated walkers approach. Backpacks, robust walking boots, woolly socks - the lot. I suppose I could have simply told them the area was private, but inspiration strikes and a slightly different tactic springs to mind. If Anthony Hopkins doesn’t work … this just might. For some reason, they don’t so much as glance at me so I greet them with wild enthusiasm. “Have you heard about the banana slugs? They are great … you lick them and they are totally hallucinogenic! There are oodles of them down there and they are all just waiting for you.” This is, of course, an utter fib. No self-respecting banana slug would be seen dead within a few hundred miles of the place; it is far, far too dry. But my new acquaintances neither challenge my limacological knowledge nor slacken their pace. Strange as it might seem, the pair appear more horrified than enthused about the prospect of a close encounter with the fictitious slugs. I decide to appeal to the woman’s maternal instincts. “They are just so cute! It’s the way they lie on their adorable little yellow tummies and wiggle about like anything. You simply must, must see them”. The only result of this is that they accelerate a bit and shoot past me. I have to warn the photographer and her self conscious model. I burst into song at the top of my lungs: “If you go down to the woods today you are sure of a BIG SURPRISE …” This works. The model has just time to vanish just before the unfortunate walkers sprint by. The poor dears may not have seen any examples of ariolimax columbianus, but I can’t help feeling I gave them a pretty interesting woodland experience.

Teachers-at-Arms

 

It was about 7.40 AM and I pulled into a Starbucks as I was driving to San Francisco. There was a slightly sinister fellow wandering about the carpark dressed in military camouflage and wearing dark glasses. It was only when I got out of the car that I realised he was carrying something that looked like a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). In a split second I was crouching behind my vehicle stick in hand and shaking from a rush of pure adrenaline (cowardice). What to do? The coffee shop was too far and my phone was in the car. I concocted a desperate plan - he must surely have seen me so I’d wait till he was within range, jump out and bash him senseless with my stick. I cautiously looked round the back of the car and was horrified to see him levelling the RPG in my direction whilst staring menacingly. Terrified though I was, I continued to gaze back while praying to St. Jude. The man released some sort of catch and his device started to blow leaves. Now, although there may be some humour involved in my retelling it, my purpose is not to amuse - I have a serious point. Like most teachers, I have absolutely no military experience and wasn’t even a boy scout. The man was foolish to wear an army-style outfit, but he was utterly innocent and was only perceived as a threat due to my ignorance and my fervid imagination. Had the government provided me with a weapon, I am almost sure I would have used it especially if I thought I was protecting students. Stress would have prevented me from shooting to maim rather than kill and my clumsiness would have endangered other innocents. As a guest in your country, it is not my place to talk politics, but I can’t help feeling there has to be a better way than arming educators.

Fools Rush In Where Angels Fear to Tread

So, a 64 year old albeit strangely youthful Englishman cheerfully strolls into this fortress-like high school in Bayview, San Francisco. It is more than a little imposing: slightly rusty chain-link fencing reaching into the sky, formidable security gates, guards and simply oodles of cameras.  Had it not been for the leafy surroundings and the improbably neat, colourful little houses, I’d have been reminded slightly of a maximum security prison in Britain like Dartmoor or Wormwood Scrubs.  The views of Hunter’s Point and the Bay are pretty nice though.

I go in search of the office, which seems to be locked up.   I eventually gain ingress and chat to the cheerful receptionist.  Rather improbably, it appears that I’ve been assigned to the gym  - I was rather hoping for English or History.  I hobble up to a couple of amazingly tall young gentlemen shoving balls into a kind of net-like thing. 

“Awfully nice to meet you.  Is this what is known as baseball?”

After a little confusion while they sum me up, the kids are extremely warm and welcoming.  They patiently explain that it is something called netball.    One politely asks about my age in a slightly convoluted way:

“I am not asking how old you are or anything.  But how long before you are a hundred?”

I perform a relatively rapid mental calculation and tell him that I’ve got a good 36 years to go.  I ask why he is so interested. He tells me that when I have reached a hundred I get to meet the Queen. I refrain from mentioning that by that time she will be pretty elderly too.

The weeks pass and I look forward to each day.   The students are a bit wild but tractable.  They constantly try to mimic my accent - usually by saying “hey mate” with a somewhat Australian intonation.  Whenever I walk across the ‘blacktop’ I get high fives and fist bumps. 

In class I have my helpers - the tall chaps I met on the first day.  At the end of one lesson, I suggest that they tidy up a bit,.  Nothing much happens, but then a helper translates my request: “The little old guy wants you to clean up your Mother F***** Shit!” I could have hardly put it better myself.

Sadly all this is coming to an end.  My wife has discovered that I am working in one of the most dangerous places in the Bay and is extremely nervous.  The other day, I was waiting to meet her in an adjoining park - a fellow teacher drove by and shouted that  I was ‘frigging’ mad and should get back inside the school posthaste. It seems that there are regular robberies and even shootings in the area.    

“I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled …”.  Were I younger and more vigorous, I should stay.  These children need help.

A Modest Proposal Concerning Gun Control

 

Like many of you, I woke this morning feeling  angry and upset after last night’s soul-searing events in Texas. Another tragic and all-too-predictable school shooting has occurred and as usual grim-faced yet seemingly entirely impotent politicians appear on our screens quivering with indignation while demanding that guns be ever-so-slightly more controlled.  We all know that absolutely nothing effective will be done and that within a few months or so there will be another bloody massacre in a school, more devastated young lives, more weeping parents and more fruitless indignation.  So what is to be done?

Bizarre as it might seem, I venture to suggest that the answer lies not in a tightening of gun control measures but in a complete relaxation of the rules.  Lobbying bodies like the NRA need to stand firm and uphold their patriotic duty.  We need more guns, not fewer in this great country of ours and this will lead to a massive reduction in so-called ‘soft targets’ like schools or religious establishments.     

In education, arming educators and support staff is just the first of a series of steps that need to be implemented with immediate effect.  We insisted that teachers of all grade levels wear masks and have Covid vaccinations; surely, it is not too much to require that they be trained to carry and fire assault rifles and deploy stun grenades?  They wouldn’t be on their own; with a well-funded recruitment drive, within a few short years each and every school would have its very own special forces detachment.  To avoid upsetting young infants, tanks and armoured personnel carriers could be painted with cheerful, pastel colors and even decorated with cartoon animals.

Next, we turn to the children, our future citizens.  No one in their right mind would seriously expect a four year old to be able to handle a heavy machine gun, but elementary target practice should commence in kindergarten and almost any child could learn to handle a light-weight ‘plastic’ pistol like a Glock. Training in heavier weaponry and elementary guerilla tactics would begin no earlier than third grade.  

All this should be taught in a fun and positive way.  Early reading materials would include works like Janet & Xavier Build their Very Own Claymore Mine and Garroting Techniques for the Under Fives.  School playgrounds could be easily adapted and turned into mini assault courses complete with highly realistic sound effects.

Now we touch briefly on our many religious establishments.  To reduce vulnerability, measures similar to those discussed above should be implemented forthwith but with a few modifications.  For entirely laudable reasons, ‘men and women of god’ might be initially a trifle reluctant to carry semi automatics or rocket launchers, but there is no reason why teams of nondenominational assault nuns couldn’t be trained and deployed throughout the Nation.  Why nuns in particular?  Well, aside from making them fairly inconspicuous, their habits would conceal their M16 rifles and kevlar body armour.  

One final measure would be to look hard at the Second Amendment itself (“... the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”).  To abrogate or even qualify this sacred text would be tantamount to blasphemy.  I believe that the above modest suggestions are entirely within its spirit and would even go a little further.  Surely, the carrying of small, tactical nuclear weapons should be the god-given right of every true born patriot?  True, we might lose a few dozen major cities, but that would leave the gun toting miscreants with fewer places to hide.  Remember: thermonuclear devices don’t kill people; people kill people.

Some of these suggestions might strike the reader as a little rebarbative or even - dare I say - absurd.  But the idea of changing the Bill of Rights and limiting the freedom of the individual would surely have this Nation’s founders turning in their graves.   What was good for 1789 should hold good for 2022.