By Sadia Irfan
“Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach,”[1]
Despite being a very easy going person on the whole, this quote never fails to infuriate me for its sheer ignorance. Even Jack Black’s addition in the hilarious School of Rock – “And those who can’t teach, teach gym!” rankles as an insult to dedicated gym teachers everywhere.
Culturally, I was brought up to think of teachers as second only to parents in terms of deserving my respect. There is a famous saying, “Teaching is the one profession that creates all other professions.” Like doctors, teachers are part of a noble profession serving the community. Yet teachers in the UK are not paid the same as doctors and their status does not seem to be at par. A study showed that only China ‘reveres’ teachers and accords teachers and doctors the same status. The UK brackets teachers with nurses (another undervalued profession) whilst the US compares them to librarians and the Japanese to government officials. Only one in five UK adults thought that children showed their teachers respect in schools.[2] Why is this? We entrust our precious children to teachers. The foundation for their future is built in schools. Lord Adonis, the former education minister said, “To recruit the best and brightest, teaching needs to be a high status occupation and we need to understand better what contributes to the social standing of teachers.”[3]
In a society that equates job prestige with economic wealth, if we value and respect our teachers, surely they should be among the highest paid professions instead of amongst the lowest?
A good teacher is a good psychologist. He or she needs to understand what motivates individuals, where to encourage, where to be strict, which children work well together and so on. Simply conveying information does not get the job done. The cleverest or most academic people are not necessarily the best teachers. As Yeats said, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”.
It’s a shame that in the current UK education system, many teachers are too steeped in paperwork to have much enthusiasm left over for actual teaching. If you know any teachers, don’t tell them how lucky they are to work short hours and get long holidays. In my experience, the best teachers are always trying to be better. They come in early and stay at school late. They look at toilet rolls and coloured tissue with a view to how it can be used in the next DT lesson. Museums make them think of potential school trips. Teaching is an all consuming profession and the responsibility is immense. Haim Ginott said, “Children are like wet cement, whatever falls on them makes an impression.”
Who doesn’t remember a teacher who inspired them or one that made them despise the subject?
I was fortunate to have many excellent teachers growing up but two in particular stand out. Think of Malory Towers by Enid Blyton to get a picture of Miss Shaw, who taught me in my last year of Primary school. Often wearing a red cardigan and blue skirt with white hair always immaculate, she epitomised firm but fair. She made up games to broaden our vocabulary, gave us sentences to correct daily and had us doing ‘Research’ into common expressions, synonyms, idioms, metaphors and daily sentence corrections. This gave me a solid foundation in grammar, vocabulary and punctuation that serve me still. She even initiated a democratically elected council in class and gave us ‘pennies’ (her version of house points) as rewards.
Fast forward seven years. I had just started A level History in a different school. I was reluctant to move schools and I thought the History curriculum, (European History during the Reformation) would be boring compared to the 2nd World War being studied at my old school. Enter Mrs French. She made all the characters come to life. Charles V came across as a man desperately trying to hold everything together despite his powerful position as Holy Roman Emperor. The Bonfire of Vanities, Martin Luther and the birth of Protestantism were all painted in bold, vivid colours. We could picture it all so clearly.
The subject of History, which until then, had been nothing out of the ordinary and mostly followed a sequence of dates and battles suddenly took on new significance. How could we analyse the present without seeing the bigger historical picture? More importantly, how could we prepare for the future without taking the past into account? History is written by the victors, and without understanding context, bias and the importance of sources, it is very easy to believe ‘alternative facts’. Mrs French inspired me so much that I found myself studying for a History degree at Oxford when just a few years before, English or Law seemed to be an obvious choice.
It was these teachers and others that inspired me to pursue my PGCE after graduating and to qualify as a teacher. I chose Primary over Secondary as it allowed me to teach other subjects in addition to History and, to use the wet cement simile, I wanted to leave my impression. I went into it with a naïve idealism and was fortunate I could choose a path where I could hopefully inspire others without having to follow a more lucrative but less rewarding career. So, in response to the quote at the beginning, teachers can do. They do planning, marking, assessments, invent games, create amazing art displays, write assemblies, organise trips, write reports, introduce children to new worlds through books and poetry, all whilst nurturing, encouraging and inspiring.
To quote Jacques Barzun, “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.”
It’s a tradition that it’s essential to revive.
[1] Man and Superman, George Bernard Shaw.
[2] Prof Peter Dolton at the University of Sussex
[3] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24381946