Fifty years ago, Anne Summers in Damned Whores and God’s Police echoed this theme, exposing the stereotypes that labelled women as either paragons of virtue, civilizing society or immoral promiscuous ‘whores’ who refuse to conform and are demonised by society at large.
My thesis is that teachers are similarly categorised, aided and abetted by the media which perpetuates the myth that, like Plato’s philosopher kings, teachers are either gifted purveyors of wisdom, truth and morality or bad apples who are lascivious, lazy or cruel.
Either a Mr Chipping in the classic movie Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939) or Miss Trunchbull in Matilda (1996)!
There are over 93 million teachers in the world, 320,00 in Australia. I would argue that a normal distribution would have five per cent like the charismatic and perfect Mr Chips and five per cent like the cruel and depraved Miss Trunchbull.
The teaching ‘Madonnas’ will be the stuff of Hollywood with teachers like Robyn Williams in Dead Poets Society (1989). They are charismatic and often controversially non-conformist and enjoy a cult-like following amongst their students who will attest ‘You raised me up so I can stand on mountains and walk on stormy seas’ (Josh Groban 2020).
The teaching ‘whores’ feature regularly in trashy tabloid headlines corrupting, brain-washing or seducing their students. Even more salacious news flashes will expose a female teacher predator allegedly grooming a male student!
The problem is that the remaining 90 per cent will be misrepresented and tarnished by both extreme tropes. The vast majority of teachers are neither Madonnas or whores. We are unremarkable, average human beings with the usual endowment of faults, foibles and phobias.
We won’t be featured in Hollywood movies and we won’t end up in jail. You will not find us mentioned in the daily papers for persevering and striving every day to make a tiny difference in the lives of our students, many of whom hate being at school and the world in general.
My experience is that teachers reflect society at large. Some are very capable and organised, others bumble along. Some work much too hard while others are lazy.
Some chose teaching to spend school holidays with their kids while others signed up to save the world. Some are well-balanced and blessed with a healthy sense of humour while others are neurotic and troubled.
Some are judgemental of their peers and cankerworms in their staffrooms, others are kind and team players.
In short, we are ordinary human beings with feet of clay and are essentially imperfect. And yet our bosses, students and their parents expect us to be infallible Madonnas.
Society expects us to leave at the school gate our pain, worries and frailties. In reality, we are expected to leave our personality, sexuality and private selves at home.
If we have just experienced bad news, just suck it up and float into your next class, cheerful and enthusiastic. Be ‘professional’ and hide your lives, warts and all, from your students and colleagues.
When I attended school camps or engaged in co-curricula activities I was always amused by the number of students who would remark how ‘different’ I was out of the classroom (a lot like when I was taught by nuns and wondered if they had hair and whether they ever actually ate anything!)
The point is that typecasting teachers as either Madonnas or whores only harms our profession. Meanwhile, a pharisaical public is willing to pounce on any teacher who is less than perfect. How dare he raise his voice or shout at my ‘perfect’ child?
How dare she give my genius offspring less than an ‘A’ or her report card? How dare he not be available 24 hours a day and not respond immediately to my diatribe emails? How dare she push her leftie ideas on my impressionable princess? How can teachers today earn respect when they turn up to work so scruffy?
Teachers are not perfect and never will be. Little wonder that it so hard recruiting and retaining teachers. We are on a hiding to nothing!
