Hey, Johnson. Leave our kids alone

Hello, lovelies.

            Teaching, one of the noblest professions, a job that is never taken lightly, finds itself, once again, under threat. But why? Shouldn’t we raise up those who have dedicated their lives to moulding and shaping our children’s futures. They can take a difficult or challenging subject and bring it to life. They can inspire our children to go out into the world and be the very best that they can be. Why, then, are these hard working and life changing teachers under even more pressure? The hare-brained scheme of the government to fire and rehire our teachers, all so they can reduce their pensions, pile on more hours all for the benefit of saving a few extra pounds. Where is the logic in that? Why chastise our teachers that do, all so these who don’t have a clue about shaping the minds of our children can dream up ways to keep our children in the dark? Should we stay quiet, allow the steal to happen? Or does our society deserve better? Do our children deserve better? Do we deserve better?

         As an adult I love learning. But that wasn’t always the case. As a child, I had no idea what school was all about. It was a place that held all the answers, but I had no idea what the questions were. Other children would sail through the classes, were able to revise and pass their exams, all while I watched on, baffled by what I was supposed to do. I was labelled as bright, but not academic. And it wasn’t until I was 17 that I was tested for dyslexia. A common enough term today, but back then, being labelled as dyslexic was a heavy price to pay. And at 17, so much of my education was over. I had somehow managed to scrape through enough of my exams to be passable for further education, but all I wanted to do was to switch off that part of my life and do something that I was actually good at. And for me, drama school was the answer. But was it the teacher’s fault that I had such a rough time if it? Or was it my fault? Could I have tried harder? Put in a ton of extra hours? Found a better way to make my broken brain work? 

      It would be very easy for me to blame the teachers for not recognising that my brain wasn’t wired in the more conventional way. But that wouldn’t be completely fair. Some of them tried to help me, spent extra time carefully explaining maths or physics, but I just couldn’t get it. Dyslexia is a very old word, but a relatively new understanding. There are times that you do have to tell me twice, or even better, show me before I’m good to go. And, okay, I do need more time that others to understand, but that doesn’t mean I can’t learn, it just means that it takes me longer. 

      All that was a very long time ago and our understanding has moved on in leaps and bounds. Being dyslexic is now nothing more than a hurdle. And by being adult I can see that although I slipped through the cracks, those teachers did really try to help me. They worked hard without any real understanding of what challenges I was facing. They were doing what they could within the parameters that they had.

    Now that my children are older, I can see just what having a good teacher really means to their lives. My teenage son has just walked into the room and told me that he had just completed a ‘bare’ amount of revision. And in ‘youth’ terms, that means he did a lot. He has just submitted his choices for A-levels and is generally very happy at school. And for him, when my life fell to pieces five years ago, his school stepped in, put us in contact with Camhs and supported not only him but me, too. The teachers were watching and waiting to help a family in desperate need. 

     I have a very good friend who is a teacher, and she is just the gift that keeps on giving. But she was put under unrealistic pressure and unworkable hours. She always did her very best, but the job could have broken her. And I found myself asking, why? Why should someone spend years training to help our children, be pushed to burn out? 

     My eldest daughter graduated from University last summer, and as part of her degree she had to sign up to thousands of pounds worth of student debt. Now I know they say that you only need to start paying it off when you earn over a certain amount, but as we all know, the yoke of debt that could last the rest of our lives is dangerous and down right criminal in my eyes. 

     And that put me in mind of an old saying, that those in charge only want to educate and train us up just enough to get by, but not actually enough to ask questions and break down the system that holds us in place. Is that what is happening? Is education only good enough for those who hold all the power and wealth? Are the rest of us not entitled to teachers that can afford to teach? Do we really want them thinking about quitting the job altogether because they cannot afford to stay? Yes, we can all think back to that one teacher that didn’t like us. Or the teacher that would pick on us, when they knew that we hadn’t studied. But we can also remember the teachers who made the learning process fun. Teachers have the right to do what they love and be paid accordingly. They worked tirelessly through the pandemic, and now the government want to fire and rehire them on less money. And I say no. We all need to say no! we need to let our teachers know that our futures and the futures of our children, heck, the very real future of our country relies on them continuing to teach.