I already knew when I started this current academic year back in September 2017, my 16th year in full time 16-19 education, that I wanted it to be my last. I mean, you know the writing’s on the wall if you’re already dreading returning to work in only the second week of a six week long summer holiday, as was the case last summer.
At the start of the year, handing in my notice was contingent upon my second income streams (see below*) not only increasing, but also ‘stabilising and thankfully, since that time, these streams have actually both increased and stabilized to an extent that I was able to formally hand in my notice and call time on my 19 year (in total) career in teaching. (I think the grammar's correct there, maybe too much tense wandering?)
Over the past few months I’ve been reflecting (some may say over-thinking) on the reasons why I’m quitting teaching, and identified 10 features of the contemporary education system in the U.K (or you might say 10 interrelated systemic logics) and in this post I reflect on how these 11 factors have worked together to push me out of the school door.
This is my original Intro Post: 11 reasons why I’m quitting teaching - which contains my original thoughts on the matter… NB this was four months ago and at the time it was 11, since reduced to 10 and also restructured, so the list below is in a slightly different order to my original, gradually released presentation. Things have evolved, and this is one of the things I like about steemit: you can play and evolve things as they develop, and people generally go along with it.
10 reasons why I’m quitting teaching (index)
Reason 1: formal education is A tryanny of numbers - our marketised education system priorities results above all else, and after 30 years, teachers and students are ‘governed’ by their performance in exams. We now spend so long ‘exam training’ that other, more creative and critical aspects of education have effectively been sidelined.
Reason 2 - written exams don’t measure ability - A second problem I have with modern education is that students are assessed (and teacher performance judged) by exams which only measure a relatively narrow range of intelligence, This post outlines many of the types of intelligence which are not measured by formal written examinations.
Reason 3 - funding cuts to education have made performative pressures more intense- and I’ve had a 14% real terms pay cut in the last five years!
Reason 4 - the 20-1 student teacher ratio - financial constraints mean we end up with too many students per teacher to provide effective individualised learning, while at the same time this number is too small to provide input efficiently (you may as well just stick it all online. (NB - I’m not a fan of the so-called solution to this known as flipped learning)
Reason 5 - marketing has become a more signficant part of education - and I find this profoundly alienatiing because I no longer recongise the college at which I’ve worked for 16 years in the marketing literature.
Reason 6 - the current system creates winners and losers, largely based on social class - drawing mainly on the work of Danny Dorling, I outline how something like a sixth of kids (mainly from the lower working classes) fail at school, which effectively means they end up with a label which many of them struggle to overcome, meanwhile at the top end, thanks to huge amounts of fincial and cultural capital, the upper middle classes are able to make the system work for them.
Reason 7 - education is increasingly expected to solve social problems - at the same time as getting results and increasing the inequalities that lead to some of those problems!
Reason 8 - the education system encourages students to seek individualised solutions to systemically induced problems - whereas I believe we need to seek social solutions to systemic problems!
Reason 9 - the bullshit positive pyschology movement is hikacking the education system- as an ‘individualised solution’ to systemically induced problems
Reason 10 - education no longer fits post-modern society - at the same time as all of the above, our education system (still based on a modernist, industrial model) is increasingly out of step with our post-modern society.
Final conclusions - why I’m quitting teaching: the contradictory logics of the contemporary education system…
Very finally, I just want to emphasise that it’s not the kids, it’s not the other teachers, it’s not even the management as individuals. As individuals, the vast majority are perfectly lovely, reasonably intelligent, compassionate people.
As I see it, all of the above systemic logics combine in such a way to encourage high levels of both anomie and alienation at the level of the individual. It works something like this:
The marketised system forces us to emphasise results, and creates a very pressurised environment, in which teachers and students have to focus on a very narrow range of exam-focused learning, which has become further pressurised because of recent funding cuts to education.
The same system generates two further logics: the need for more marketing, to attract more students (which = more funding) and increasing inequality - as those who can afford it pile more and more money into hot-housing their children while the poor are left as failures (although they may still succeed in life despite failing in education.
Simultaneously to this, education is expected to compensate for many other social problems, at the same time as constantly improving results.
Because all of this is basically impossible to manage (for teachers as well as for many students) the bullshit positive psychology movement steps in with ‘mindfulness’ lessons as a coping strategy’. This actually fits in very well with the ‘party line’ of the school/ college which has a long tradition of individualisation and responsibilisation.
All of this is going on in the context of an ‘evolving postmodern society which the current education system seems extremely out of touch with...
At the end of the day….all of this has created within me a profound sense of anomie and alienation!
So while I love education, I can’t carry on in the current system!
If you like this sort of thing, then why not check out my main blog over at revisesociology.com - *I'll be relying on as my main income source from September this year!