I'm gonna speak an uncomfortable truth to the teachers and teachers in training. And the call is coming from inside the house, I am myself a teacher in training and have been "teaching" as a tutor and substitute for a while now.
All Teachers Are Bastards.
We are part of a carceral system. We are bricks in the wall that seperates children and teens from full personhood and agency. We are part of a machine that encourages obedience and "studying" and punishes questioning and learning. We are not "forming the next generation of change", we are "pressing kids into molds of good little workers", or at least we are supposed to. We are part of the "biopower" that makes children and teens not human. That makes children and teens less than.
This applies all over the world but especially in the west (Europe, Canada, the USA).
In a lot of marginalized communities being a bastard is actually unavoidable for teachers, because us forcing the kids to conform might one day save their life. I wanted to say "especially now, you have to lock in, because we know what happens to those of us who are not useful." to my students in remedial tutoring so many times when they ask me why I am bothering and why they should bother.
I hate my job. The more I learn, what my job actually is and what other smarter people already figured out about the job, the more I hate it.
I hate that we already know that we are bastards (critical education theory/science, critical social work), but if we're not bastards then the bastards with guns and handcuffs are going to get them.
I hate that we know that children and teens are people, not "people in the making", but are expected to treat them as the second one anyway because that's just how it is.
I hate that we know that a third of children in each class will be neurodivergent and/or disablef, about half of them will be affected by poverty, half to two thirds will be racialized, about a third will experience queerphobia, about a third (if they are above 14) will either work or be caretaker of a relative, and nanny of them will fit more than one or even two of these but we are not allowed to speak up about that, or stand up for them.
I hate that the sentence "remember I am a mandated reporter, you can not tell me everything" has become part of my vocabulary, instead of the "that sounds hard, I am here to listen and to give advice whenever you need it" that I want to say.
I hate that we all know that exams, assignments, tests and grades are not the "tools of objective assessments" the system, and as it's proxy we teachers, claim they are, but simply tools to exert power, create hierarchy and determine who gets resources and who doesn't.
I want to be there for my students, I want to accompany and help them on their learning journeys and in their development, but, god damn it, I'm not actually allowed to.
I didn't enrol in teachers college to become a fucking cop! And I know for a fact most of my fellow coursemates didn't either, but non of us actually know what to do. Do we quit? Do we protest? Do we try and change the system from the inside? Do we try and be the one good teacher, everyone of us had, and aspires to be? Do we join and sabotage?
It feels like no matter what we do, we fail the ones we choose this job for in the first place. No matter what, the children will be the ones suffering the most.
Edits: spelling (I hope I caught them all)
