Larvatus Prodeo

A bit of a shoutout to all the teachers out there on the intertubes – we love youse all!

Today is World Teachers’ Day. I’m sure there are very few of us who don’t remember teachers who made significant differences in our lives. It might be a neat way to celebrate to tell some of those stories on this post – you never know, your favourite chalkies might even be reading.

That might also be a useful corrective to the constant attacks in the political realm teachers have to confront – not to mention working conditions which are far from ideal, and having all sorts of social problems heaped on them to solve when no one else will apparently take responsibility. In Mark’s post the other day, discussing “Wicked Problems” in public policy, he mentioned Judith Brett’s consideration of this theme in her article in the current edition of The Monthly. Brett referred to education as one domain where a whole set of inter-related issues meet which make neat objectives like “better schools” almost impossible to achieve through magical policy transformations pollies of all stripes are in the habit of promising. In practice, whatever you think about the schools policy stuff announced by Julia Gillard recently (and I don’t think much of it), you should be able to agree that teachers are only one part of the educational policy mix. But – perhaps because unions are also a convenient can to kick for both conservative and “Third Way” style pols – they tend to get blamed for everything. I’m sure anyone who’s worked in the education game will agree that it’s a really demanding job, and one that takes a degree of commitment beyond most vocations. Let’s recognise that!