Everyone has been to school; therefore everyone has a view on education. If I mention that I am training as a teacher, I can safely assume that I will be bombarded by views on education, opinions on past teachers and a strategy to change the world by whoever I happen to be speaking to.
Even my friends assess ‘how good a teacher’ I will be. It’s odd; I can’t imagine myself speculating on how great an accountant, lawyer, or banker someone might be, and discussing their personality match with their chosen profession. The fact that they have been to school seems to give people the right to analyse how I will fit in in that familiar environment.
Hearing people discuss whether I am ‘authoritative’ enough or have the right personality to teach in inner-city London is incredibly irritating as well as patronising. I don’t presume to comment upon whether I believe my friends are capable of leading a presentation in the workplace – somehow the fact that I am a teacher puts me in the public domain and up for assessment. I am currently learning that education is so much more complicated than what one perceives as a student – how can someone who once went to school feel that they have the knowledge and expertise to assess and even change education? That would be like me making sweeping statements about banking reforms on the strength of the fact that I have an account at Natwest.
Of course, this is the teacher’s long-established moan for depoliticising education: how can we work in an industry that is subject to complete sea-change at the whim of a new government or minister, who might have just shuffled over from the Department for Transport and have a previous career as an economics expert on their CV?
This is obviously simplifying the matter. Politicians have a team of educational experts working behind them on their shiny new policies, and new ideas are never as scattergun in their approach as they may appear in the pages of the Daily Mail.
But on a personal level, it can be frustrating to be judged as a professional by people who base their understanding of education on their own education. Often, people are exceptions not the rule, and are incredibly biased judges of their own education. Just because I don’t remember learning grammar doesn’t mean that I didn’t, and also doesn’t mean that grammar shouldn’t be taught. The fact that I have an excellent grasp of grammar may be due to a vast slew of factors, but these factors are probably personal to me. My perceived personal experience doesn’t give me the right or the prerogative to change how grammar is taught universally.
Many people colour their views on education with the ghosts of their own education. This is, of course, natural and teachers are encouraged to reflect on their own education as a matter of course during their professional training. Nevertheless, these memories are only a starting point and cannot create a fully rounded view on how best to teach any subject or topic.
Next time I am at a dinner party and someone tells me they are a lawyer, I will not be telling them how the legal system should be reformed to reflect my (fortunately limited!) experience of it. But tomorrow, or the next day, when someone informs me of how I should be teaching, or whether I will be a ‘good teacher’ in their perception of the term, I will be restraining myself. Or forcibly restraining them.
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