TEACHING MATTERS: By this stage of the year, the long school holidays that earn us such envy are but distant memories. "Pity about ye," says the non-teacher. "Have ye not got another week off coming up soon?" Teachers are in danger of being seen as professional whingers, writes Breda O'Brien
So entrancing is the vista of three months off every summer, that even the fairest person finds it hard to understand how anything could take the shine off such a perk. It is difficult for teachers to explain the kind of unease they feel about their profession, and the direction being taken by the Department of Education and Science, without sounding like people who just, well, whinge a lot.
Yet there is palpable unease among teachers at second level, a feeling that the profession of teaching is changing inexorably, and not always in a direction that teachers would wish. Take, for example, the finding of the interim report of the Task Force on Student Behaviour. It found that between 5 and 10 per cent of second-level students engage in constant low-level disruption. Examples include such things as non-stop talking, coming late for class, never having the relevant class materials, or blatant refusal to follow instructions. In the average classroom of 30 pupils, that means that two or three of them are constantly behaving like this.
However, teachers know that far more than two or three students act in this way, and in some disadvantaged areas there may be only two or three who do not behave like this. Parents who encounter negative behaviour are often hard-pressed to counter it, yet teachers are supposed to deal with far greater numbers, and still remain fair and calm.
Some teachers see the problem as an increase in self-centred behaviour and a decline in basic manners. Some of it, though, comes from a change in perception about the purpose of education. Twenty or 30 years ago, there was a reasonable degree of acceptance that it was good to learn things just for the sake of knowing them. An educated person was expected to be familiar with his or her own culture. However, in recent times, education, and particularly second-level education, is seen merely as a stepping-stone to third-level, which is seen, in turn, as a stepping-stone to a comfortable middle-class existence. Any student who has as little chance of getting to third-level as they have of winning the Eurovision Song Contest is automatically going to despise the system. Those for whom the system apparently works become more and more cynical about maximising points, and more and more blatant about the demands they are prepared to make to achieve that end.
At the same time, the Department of Education is hinting that schools need to become more competitive, and that parents have the right to exercise choice with regard to schools. This language, which comes primarily from the marketplace, contributes to education becoming just another commodity rather than an important part of developing human potential.
There is a substantial body of research accumulating on what are called "unintended consequences" of various forms of meddling in education. One of the most famous examples comes from British third-level education, where the way funding was allocated for research led to those who were good at research doing less and less teaching. The teaching of undergraduates was increasingly farmed out to part-timers and post-graduate students. Thus, one of the core activities of universities, that is, actually teaching people, slid way down the agenda.
Teachers at second-level in Ireland fear that the emphasis on availability of information to parents will also have unintended consequences. There are already sack-loads of paperwork cascading into principals' offices. As a result, being a principal is becoming less and less attractive.
As the paper begins to filter down the system, there is another unintended consequence. If teachers are aware of imminent Whole School Evaluation, or subject inspection, sometimes they begin to keep records purely to please the inspectors. Every teacher keeps some level of records, because that is part of being a professional however, the level of paperwork is increasing every year, and frankly some of it is redundant or, at worst, an exercise in second-guessing what inspectors might want to see. As a colleague in another school said to me sadly: "I knew something had gone seriously wrong when the first thought I had when a serious incident of bullying was reported to me, was how would I document it and be seen to be taking appropriate action?"
There is a level of paperwork that begins to interfere with the task at hand, and some teachers believe we have reached that level. Education is not just another commodity. There are some aspects of teaching that defy documentation. The old joke used to be that teaching would be a great job if it were not for the pupils. The new joke - except no-one is smiling - is that teaching would be a great job if it were not for the paperwork.
Breda O'Brien is a teacher at Dominican College, Muckross Park, Dublin