Why does everyone hate teachers?
Discussion
Evening all
Just prior to turning in I was perusing the bbc website and came across this article
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19683920
Now I have to be upfront and honest here, I am a teacher and as such was rather put out by the suggestion that my work should be judged by the time that I leave school each day. However the thing that I found most shocking about the whole article was the comments page. There are over a thousand comments on this article alone, and of the ones I've read (admittedly not many - takes away from valuable ph time!) it seems to be a 50/50 split amongst those condemning the idea (largely teachers) and those saying teachers have it easy/should stop moaning/get a real job etc etc.
Now I know that these responses often come from those people with an axe to grind, but the sheer number of responses makes me think that perhaps there is a genuine dislike for teachers in the uk now. If this is the case, I'd really appreciate it if people would explain it to me!
Thanks in advance,
Just prior to turning in I was perusing the bbc website and came across this article
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19683920
Now I have to be upfront and honest here, I am a teacher and as such was rather put out by the suggestion that my work should be judged by the time that I leave school each day. However the thing that I found most shocking about the whole article was the comments page. There are over a thousand comments on this article alone, and of the ones I've read (admittedly not many - takes away from valuable ph time!) it seems to be a 50/50 split amongst those condemning the idea (largely teachers) and those saying teachers have it easy/should stop moaning/get a real job etc etc.
Now I know that these responses often come from those people with an axe to grind, but the sheer number of responses makes me think that perhaps there is a genuine dislike for teachers in the uk now. If this is the case, I'd really appreciate it if people would explain it to me!
Thanks in advance,
miniman said:
Jesus titty f
king Christ. God forbid that excellence be rewarded whilst mediocrity is removed from the system.
There are ready systems in place to ensure that pay is linked to achievement. If teachers don't achieve the targets they dont get a pay rise. king Christ. God forbid that excellence be rewarded whilst mediocrity is removed from the system. Edited by miniman on Sunday 23 September 21:58
Caulkhead said:
Is it because they're always moaning about how hard they work yet some seem to have time to make 100 posts on a motoring forum in their first month! 
Ha ha, busted! Lunchtime postings mainly tbh!Seriously though, I'm not moaning about anything I don't think? I'm genuinely interested as to why attitudes towards teachers seem so deeply divided when in other countries (especially Scandinavia in my experience) seem to have a far more post prove attitude towards them.
TankRizzo said:
If teaching unions engaged properly and constructively to talk about how change could be achieved in an adult manner, great things could be done.
As a teacher I utterly agree with this! I want the profession to progress, and agree that theonly way to do it is to discuss the improvement. I'm not actively in favour of unions. I am a memeber of one, but only because of the legal prtection they provide should spurious accusations be made against me. NoNeed said:
I once had a boss that used to say "Those that can, do. Those that can't, teach."
This is exactly the quote I was thinking of when I was asking about the difference in attitudes towards teachers here and in, for example, scandiavia. Over there this sort of idea isn't at all prevalent. Over here this quote is rolled out all the time, however whenever I tell people what I do I almost invariable get the response 'ooh, I couldn't do that'. Now I'm in no way suggesting that this makes me special (I, for instance, couldn't work 9-5 in an office as it would drive me insane!), but it's horses for courses isn't it? I cannot think of another profession which is denegrated in that way at all. Can anyone else?KaraK said:
Have you heard the names people call the police? Nurses, dentists and vets get called "failed doctors" and I've certainly encountered a whole host of derogatory comments about my own profession (IT) - apparantly we are all geeky social lepers who still live with our parents and have never seen a woman naked.
Good point, hadn't thought of that! I take it all back!Many thanks for all the responses. I really appreciate the viewpoints of those not 'in the bubble' of education.
I'm afraid it sounds like I am exactly the kind of teacher so many of you dislike though, I drifted into the profession because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do but enjoyed the interaction with young people. I tried it as part of the PGCE course, enjoyed it and remained! I have never had a 'proper' job outside of the 'bubble', so it is very difficult to gain a true perspetive on the way that teachers are viewed outside.
I agree that there are people who do 'drift' through their careers. However I can assure you that there are very stringent measures in place now to make this as difficult as possible. You need to pass your performance management targets each year to progress. I face the possibility of not progressing this year for the first time ever as my class didn't meet the performance criteria. It's particularly frustrating for me, as the students that failed to do so were as a consequence of issues outside of my control (a drugs issue, two parental bereavements and one lazy b*****d who simply would not do anything despite my and his parents best efforts). Hopefully I will be able to get these through as mitigating events, but don't hold out too much hope, however neither am I intending to sound as if I am complaining as I know what my targets are and also the consequernces of not meeting them.
I'm afraid it sounds like I am exactly the kind of teacher so many of you dislike though, I drifted into the profession because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do but enjoyed the interaction with young people. I tried it as part of the PGCE course, enjoyed it and remained! I have never had a 'proper' job outside of the 'bubble', so it is very difficult to gain a true perspetive on the way that teachers are viewed outside.
I agree that there are people who do 'drift' through their careers. However I can assure you that there are very stringent measures in place now to make this as difficult as possible. You need to pass your performance management targets each year to progress. I face the possibility of not progressing this year for the first time ever as my class didn't meet the performance criteria. It's particularly frustrating for me, as the students that failed to do so were as a consequence of issues outside of my control (a drugs issue, two parental bereavements and one lazy b*****d who simply would not do anything despite my and his parents best efforts). Hopefully I will be able to get these through as mitigating events, but don't hold out too much hope, however neither am I intending to sound as if I am complaining as I know what my targets are and also the consequernces of not meeting them.
Lotusevoraboy said:
But you do get your weekends it seems...and your job is not lambasted by all and sundry at every opportunity.
This is something else I don't understand (clearly there are loads of things!). On the original article there were lots of teachers saying how hard their jobs are. There were also other people saying that they don't know they're born etc. why is there this need to show who has it worse off? To the best of my (apparently not that considerable based on this thread's evidence!) knowledge, this just doesn't happen elsewhere in the world! Timmy35 said:
Can I just add something, somewhere along the way in this topic it seems to have been determined that teachers who get all there marking done during the day ( so no home marking ), don't work weekends, and openly enjoy the long holidays and pay are somehow inherently bad/lazy teachers.
Alot of teachers are irritating because they won't accept that they have it bloody good, holidays, pensions, good hours etc, but that doesn't make them bad teachers. My ex was an excellent teacher she attained superb results as did her friends.....however that didn't mean that they weren't doing the job primarily for it's excellent benefits compared with other jobs. Which they clearly were.
I'm quite happy to admit that the benefits of teaching were considerations in my career choice! I also agree that you can be a good teacher whilst enjoying all those benefits, but it isn't always that easy sadly!Alot of teachers are irritating because they won't accept that they have it bloody good, holidays, pensions, good hours etc, but that doesn't make them bad teachers. My ex was an excellent teacher she attained superb results as did her friends.....however that didn't mean that they weren't doing the job primarily for it's excellent benefits compared with other jobs. Which they clearly were.
shouldbworking said:
I'd require a person teaching a subject to have at least 3-4 years relevant commercial experience in it. That'd get rid of the people who fall into the career because they don't know what they want to do, and improve the quality of the teaching.
Ok, I can see the logic in this, but how would several years working in industry help me to deliver my history lessons? I 'fell' into teaching (in that when i finished my degree I wasn't sure where to go with it, and as my family are largely teachers thought I'd give that a go and discovered I enjoyed it and was able to do it) and yet since my NQT year have never had a lesson observation of any kind fall below the 'good' rating. This, combined with my students producing good results year on year would suggest that you don't necessarily have to have industry experience to suceed as a teacher IMHO.S50B32 said:
nadger said:
I am a memeber of one, but only because of the legal prtection they provide should spurious accusations be made against me.
I have heard similar to this previously. Do I understand correctly that a school doesn't have liability-type insurance if allegations are brought against a teacher, so a teacher is almost forced into joining the union to provide this protection?As an aside, should this happen, even if the case is quashed, the allegation remains on the teacher's record for the rest of their careers. This is something that many non-teachers are unaware of in my experience.
shouldbworking said:
My answer to this and the other person who asked along the same lines would be that there needs to be a focus in lessons from an early age on what this knowledge could allow you to do for a job, and how you might apply it commercially. If there aren't that many commercial jobs related to it, then do we need as many people teaching it? Don't get me wrong, history is amazing as is learning for the sake of learning in general, but I don't think there is anywhere near enough focus in school on preparing students for the world outside of education.
I'm not an insane capitalist where everything must be done to make money, but having this sort of focus early on would let children / young adults make a more informed decision as to whether or not they wanted to focus on a subject they are passionate about but may have tradeoffs in terms of how easy it is to find related work.
Wouldn't mind becoming a teacher myself, probably would put off any students though with bitter cynicism of commerical experience.
An interesting point, and one I don't necessarily disagree with. In my experience you're right, that kids don't really know or understand what they need to progress in the world. An example of this is from speaking to 6th form students who had no idea that below Oxbridge there were unis that were perceived to be better than others! We also had a lad come back yesterday who thought that because he hadnt done enough work at school, and since he had a sports leaders qualification, he could get a job teaching 'sport' at the school!I'm not an insane capitalist where everything must be done to make money, but having this sort of focus early on would let children / young adults make a more informed decision as to whether or not they wanted to focus on a subject they are passionate about but may have tradeoffs in terms of how easy it is to find related work.
Wouldn't mind becoming a teacher myself, probably would put off any students though with bitter cynicism of commerical experience.
However even if you do bring in people with industry experience I'm of the opinion that it wont bring that much benefit of the type that you describe. In a modern school the requirements of the syllabuses and the exam boards mean that you really have little time to spend on such things, as you have to focus on preparing the students for the exams. I'm not for a second suggesting that your idea is a bad one, simply that it may not have quite the impact that you think it will!
Ozzie Osmond said:
Yes, and every soldier is a hero, every police officer is a hero, every fireman is a hero and so on.
Answer me this. If the teachers are so great how come UK educational achievement ranks so low among civilised countries, with our own universities left aghast at the pitiful skills of school leavers? Employers are well aware that it's often better to engage someone who's second language is English than to take on a Brit.
Things are going so well that GCSEs have to be replaced....
Ok, I'm not going to say that things are rosy in the garden, but isn't blaming the teachers for this a bit OTT? The teachers deliver what is expected of them, in line with the targets set by the government/exam boards. The fact that exam results are going up year on year could be put down to teachers improving year on year, showing that teaching standards are going up (which, in my experience, is the case). Blaming teachers for the failure of the system is like blaming the radio for the music that is playing! Answer me this. If the teachers are so great how come UK educational achievement ranks so low among civilised countries, with our own universities left aghast at the pitiful skills of school leavers? Employers are well aware that it's often better to engage someone who's second language is English than to take on a Brit.
Things are going so well that GCSEs have to be replaced....
Du1point8 said:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/secondaryeduc...
teaching kids how to pass exams is not really teaching them the subject though, Teaching to the test is what I believe the name is.
Though I doubt any PH teacher has ever done that in their life.
Of course you teach the kids how to pass the exam. If you didn't you would be failing them. However part of preparing them to pass the exam is to give them tbe knowledge they need as well as the skills required by the exam. I'd be amazed if any teacher doesn't do that to be honest! Would you let a mechanic who knew what every part of your car was, but didn't understand how they worked together?teaching kids how to pass exams is not really teaching them the subject though, Teaching to the test is what I believe the name is.
Though I doubt any PH teacher has ever done that in their life.
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