KEY POINTS:
Teaching is a noble profession. I think this more and more often now I have children of my own and realise what egotistic little maniacs they are, just unformed messy bundles of impulses.
In oxytocin-soaked moments, I even fancy myself at the front of the classroom. I imagine myself in eccentric tweed skirts, being tough but fair, like a cross between Michelle Pfeiffer and Miss Jean Brodie, quoting Larkin and talking about the rocky foreshore in inspiring ways.
I think about the great teachers I had.
With my form one teacher, Mr Carter, at Melville Intermediate School, we made Super 8 movies. One of them was the whimsical story of a Pierrot and Pierrette - in another I think we were emulating the Hot Gossip dancers in the Kenny Everett Video Show. He'd probably get into trouble for that now.
Then I come out of my reverie and donk myself on the old bean with a Thomas the Tank Engine abacus until some reality filters back in. No one in their right mind would be a teacher.
It's official. A Ministry of Education report out this week, Becoming a Teacher in the 21st Century, found a significant number of teachers were frighteningly useless. If you're an employer and have to deal with graduates who think Honduras is near Hamilton, I doubt this comes as a big surprise.
The report also found there was "relatively low public regard for teachers compared to their standing in many other OECD countries". The report didn't join the dots but I think I know why teaching as a calling is moribund here.
And it's not just the pay. The teachers' union has signed a $300 million pay-rise package but it won't make a difference.
In this country, being a teacher is not so much joining a profession as joining a political party; the cult of NZEI. That doesn't exactly entice the creative types like Mr Carter, who wouldn't be keen on staffing the Labour Party cake stall.
It doesn't have to be this way. In the US, some of the brightest graduates choose to go and work in "charter" schools, autonomous public schools, where they have the freedom to try innovative approaches. In one example profiled by the New York Times, a charter school was getting great results with children from deprived backgrounds by teaching them basic but radical ideas like making eye contact when talking to someone.
New Zealand has actually gone some way towards this charter model by involving local parents in the governance of their schools with boards of trustees - schools even have charters. But what's missing is the freedom for each school to do things differently.
The ministry told me there are "designated character schools" allowed under s156 of the Education Act but there are only 13 of them and 11 are Maori language schools. They still have to teach the New Zealand curriculum.
There are other good ideas to get talented people into classrooms but you don't hear much about them from unions.
Back in the policy ferment of the 1980s, educationalists were keen on the idea of making it easy for professional people with successful careers, or old trouts like me, to dip in and out of teaching so their real-life skills were used.
Not that I remember much about the rocky foreshore.
* deborah@coneandco.com
