I was alarmed by a survey of nearly 8,500 teachers which revealed that 13% of them had been assaulted by pupils in the last year and that more than a quarter had been subjected to verbal abuse by a parent.
I spent a seven happy years teaching in the nineteen eighties and was fortunate enough never to have felt threatened by a pupil, nor was I aware of any colleague experiencing that either. I confess that I always found the parents much harder work, but never to the extent of anything anywhere near the threshold of what might be described as ‘verbal abuse’.
Undoubtedly society has become coarser and more disordered, but there remain spectacularly well-disciplined schools in some of the least favoured areas.
As with any walk of life, some teachers are outstanding and others less so. Yet when I became a teacher, my parents were very proud. That is because their generation had such respect for the profession. I believe the esteem, even awe, in which the profession was once held has significantly diminished. To some extent, at least, that may account for the difficulties that teachers now face.
Why has the high esteem in which the teaching profession was held been so diminished?
This is my prejudice: The unionisation of the profession over several years, by adopting the mores of the factory shop-floor, and by embracing strike action, have fundamentally changed the perception of what was once a profession, even a calling, into what is now -almost- just another ‘job’.
The teaching unions continue to display such antics and ideology at their Easter conferences that they are fortunate indeed very few are watching or listening. But those same unions welcomed so many heresies of the modern age into the classroom over the years, that cumulatively have made the work of their members so much more difficult and less rewarding.
Having left teaching and returning as a school governor just a few years later, I recall being dismayed at the disorder and familiarity -and we all know what that breeds- experienced in classrooms. Some teaching methods struck me as just draft.
The decline in literacy and numeracy that resulted, could not be ignored. The imposition of the National Curriculum, of Key Stage tests, of OFSTED, were all part of a remedy to hold the teaching profession accountable.
Inevitably they have, to some extent, become part of the problem. They certainly make the lives of teachers much more difficult, but they were introduced for very good reasons.
There remains within the profession a minority that have taken leave of their senses, exemplified in what can pass in some schools for sex education – as I described in this column on 9th March Abolishing Childhood (desmondswaynemp.com)
Returning to what teachers may have to deal with in the classroom. Of course, in my day it was somewhat easier because we had the threat of the cane. But even in those days there were excellent and well run schools that did not allow corporal punishment – but I suspect it was a lot harder work.
Anyway, when I was at school, it never did us any harm.