Teaching is a really easy thing to do. It’s a doddle, in fact. I know this because I have heard it so many times. Always from non-teachers though, funnily enough. And, even more funnily, when I reply along the lines of:

“If it’s so easy why don’t you try it?”

Those same people usually come out with things like:

“Ooh, I couldn’t do it. I don’t know how you do it. Kids are so unruly these days.”

I have a few standard responses to the “teaching is easy” statements — more for my own benefit in knowing that I answered these people, rather than any hope it might lead them to actually think:

Start at 9, finish at 4? Heaven!

If it’s so easy, why is there a continual teacher retention and recruitment crisis? The latest statistics I could find at the time of writing is that 20% of new secondary school teachers leave in the first year, while 40% leave in the first five years. Spin it how you like, those figures are appalling, and frankly a dire indictment in my opinion of the Department for Education and its predecessors, and most Education Secretaries.

Yeah, but all those holidays

This is my experience of school holidays when I was teaching. I’d spend the first week or two more or less comatose. I was lucky: a teacher friend of mine always became ill with flu or something over the holiday. Both of us had kept ourselves going during term time by sheer willpower, and then succumbed once we were able to relax. Then we’d recover just in time to do it all over again.

During the longer summer break, my holiday looked liked this:

1. First two weeks: utterly exhausted.

2. Second two weeks: enjoying a proper break.

3. Final week or two weeks: start thinking about, and preparing for, the coming term.

Here’s an interesting piece of qualitative data — well, interesting to me at any rate. In the 1980s I took 18 months out of teaching in order to help my mother in her business. That was selling clothes in an open-air market. I worked every day, in all weathers, and with no lunch break as such, and had no holiday during that time. I didn’t experience a single day’s illness. Not only that, I was able to read every evening, as opposed to falling asleep in an armchair in front of the TV. It was hard physical work, but once the working day was over I didn’t have to do much work at home, apart from recording the day’s earnings (if there were any) and making a note of which stock I needed to replenish at the weekend.

OK, but once you’ve done your marking and lesson prep, that’s it isn’t it?

I heard this one recently. I was telling someone that one of the Education Secretaries — Ken Baker as he was then (he’s now a lord) — recently wrote a letter to The Times saying that teachers’ holidays should be cancelled this year because of the extended holiday they’ve had since lockdown. As someone responded the following day, who did he think had been teaching classes online all this time then?

The person I was speaking to came out with the following “arguments”:

“Yeah, but let’s face it, Tel. A lot of kids didn’t even bother turning up to those lessons online, so it wasn’t much work for the teachers.”

I replied to the effect that that would be a matter for parents and school leaders to look into, but if the teacher has prepared the lesson and the materials, they have done the work. My lady wife came up with a good answer I think. She said that’s like saying that if you write an article, and nobody reads it, then somehow the time and effort you put into writing it has been reduced.

Then:

“Yeah, but let’s face it, Tel. If a teacher has prepared all their lessons for September, then there’s nothing left for them to do.”

I’ve never met a teacher who found they had nothing left to do. Indeed, teachers are well-known for always tweaking lesson plans, looking for more ideas, trying out new things.

I made a conscious effort to take home as little work as possible. It worked well, though I regretted the fact that it took me twenty years to think of it. Not everyone can of course, because of family commitments, but this is what a typical day looked like for me:

1. Arrive in school at 8 am.

2. Work non-stop, including lunchtimes and non-contact periods (never use the term “free period”).

3. Stay on after school finished and work there until 6 pm.

When 6 pm arrived, I hadn’t finished my work in the sense of having no more to do. I had simply reached the point where I thought the effort to make it even better (whatever the “it” happened to be) would not be cost-effective in terms of the quality of the end result.

Where are these teachers who have finished — truly finished — all their work? I’d like to know their secret!

Yeah, but all you have to do is stand up and tell them stuff

I actually heard this from a doctor. He said that teaching is dead easy because all you have to do is stand up at the front of the classroom and “tell them stuff”. I asked him":

What sort of people, just out of interest, come to you for treatment for stress?”

Unbelievably, he answered:

“Teachers. I don’t understand it though. All you have to do is stand up at the front and tell them stuff. What’s so stressful about that?”

I think that last example, says it all, really, and shows why it’s not worth wasting too much breath on these people. You would think that logically people might wonder:

• If teaching is so easy, why is it so hard to recruit them, and why do so many leave each year?

• If teaching is so easy, why does my friend/my friend’s husband/my neighbour’s daughter/etc always turn down invitations to do things, especially on Sunday evenings, and why are they always knackered?

• If teaching is so easy, why don’t I do it? Heaven knows there are always plenty of vacancies. I’d be bound to get a job.

Culture and tech

I’m sure that one of the reasons people think of teaching as being easy is because of sayings like “in the real world…”, as if schools are in some sort of parallel dimension where ordinary problems and challenges don’t exist. Also, “Those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach”, as if anyone can teach something they can’t actually do. The illogicality of that statement never seems to occur to the people who trot it out.

I find all this very annoying, and made even more so by 20- and 30-somethings who have never taught in their lives but nevertheless have no hesitation is proclaiming that they’ve developed an app or a service that can do the job of a teacher in one or more respects.

I’ll stop there, I think, before I burst a blood vessel. You might be wondering why Terry, usually the personification of placidity, has suddenly gone on a rant (a coherent one though, I hope). It’s because of all the comments I keep coming across these days about how easy it is to teach online. It isn’t. It comes with a whole different set of challenges, not the least of which is how tiring it can be, for teachers and students alike.

Concluding remarks

It would be nice if people would either try teaching for themselves, or at least undertake some research into it, before pontificating about how easy it is. (Summary: Teach before you preach”.) It would be good if they adopted the attitude of the Holy Man in the following story.

A woman brought her son to see a Holy Man.

“Could you tell my son to stop eating sugar, please?” she asked him.

“Certainly. Bring him back here in three days’ time.”

Three days passed, and the woman brought her son to the Holy Man again. Looking at the boy he said,

“Stop eating sugar!”

“Why didn’t you say that to him when I first brought him to you?”, asked the woman.

“Because”, said the Holy Man, “three days ago I had not stopped eating sugar.”

You can read this story on many levels, and two of the things it says to me are: don’t be a hypocrite, and don’t lecture people about things you know nothing about.

Rant over! Normal service will be resumed soon.