So I wasn't planning on writing anything this evening, but after a bit of a TED binge I came across a video from the ever insightful Barry Schwartz talking about, in essence, the dehumanisation of society.
The gist of his argument (allow me some license here, as I've only so far watched it the once) is that we are losing our 'practical wisdom' by the way in which we are conditioned by rod and carrot - we are told to live within a framework of rules and incentives that often ignore the fundamental purpose of the jobs in which we engage, specifically those that require any level of human interaction or responsibility. Rather than consider our own natural and evolutionary responsibility to the sentiments and development of those around us, we follow the rules and incentives laid out for us to live within. He offers a fantastic example from Sweden, in which 50% of people polled stated that nuclear waste disposal was a national responsibility which mean that they would be happy to see it disposed of in their community. When incentivised with cash (6 weeks salary in every year) the figure dropped to 25%, given that with the proposition of financial gain as well as the social responsibility, the negative factors were weighed up and found not to meet the quantifiable figure offered.
It's impossible, he argues, to offer tangable rules and quantifiable rewards to encourage people to act with what he terms 'wisdom' - the wisdom be aware of, and sensitive to, the people around us. And those rules and incentives which we do have to follow diminishes the intangible rewards, and therefore satisfaction of the jobs which we undertake.
Which, long before he started getting on to teaching, got me thinking about my job. You see, for those who don't know me too well, I love my job. Being an English Language and Literature college lecturer, I am tasked with trying to hammer into students' minds an understanding and appreciation for the language in which they communicate. The job isn't exactly stressor free - in fact the workload can be hellish at times - but there are a lot of factors which, for all its flaws (and there are many, believe me), make it a job which offers a huge amount of pleasure and reward. Some of these factors are local (to my department, not the company as a whole), some not so, but I think a fair few can be modelled onto what Schwartz is getting at in his talk.
For all of the hideous, pointless and beaurocratic rules that surround education in the UK today, ours is still a job which can be done out of the view of a microscope if it's being done well. What goes on in classrooms is thankfully, for the most part, still under jurisdiction of the teacher, and so long as those classes turn into results (which is another discussion entirely), are left so - allowing us to make a classroom an environment in which real, as well as curricular, education can be undertaken. We are lacking in incentives (I can hear raucous laughter at the idea of education being financially incentivised) and so are allowed to focus on the core purpose of our jobs, rather than focus on getting all our bits of paper completed in order to earn 10% more this month. I am fortunate to work in a department which, for the most part, doesn't take to clock watching - it's a bit hard to justify chastising someone for arriving an hour late when a typical work day might see you finishing three hours after your time is officially up. It's not so much that the rules are lax - they're actually very clear - but at a departmental level common sense is generally allowed to take over. Do your job, do it well, don't cause any problems and we'll let you find the best way to meet your objectives. If you happen to make people's lives better as a by product, then all the better.
Now I can see other teachers taking a little exception to this, and those that work with me already getting their retorts ready, so for the sake of balance....
It is true that there has been a time when I have had to try to put in words how I intend to embed numeracy skills and 'Equality and Diversity' into a lesson about the metaphorical allegory for the death of the pastoral in Tess of the D'urbervilles. And yes, we are expected to quantify results and targets and benchmarks and so on and so forth, but this doesn't mar the ultimate purpose of the job, and more importantly, the way in which we conduct it (at least not for those with an ounce of common sense). We can hopefully see past all that shit, and focus on the people for which our job exists as well as for the purpose it exists, that of taking repsonsibility of students' education - one which goes far beyond the confines of the curriculum.
Maybe this is a little naive, and maybe I am as yet not wearied by the long arm of centralised education, but at the moment I love it. And though it doesn't exactly offer the same satisfaction as travelling the world, or thrill or dessing up like and idiot and throwing myself around a stage, it still offers a pleasure and satisfaction that not many other life pursuits do, vocational or otherwise.
I probably will still leave it soon though, I mean I don't want to be a teacher for the rest of my life.....do I?
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