Teachers across the UK are going on strike. Children going into schools on their first day following the holidays are facing cancelled classes. Teachers are being accused of sacrificing their pupils’ future over their own political beliefs. Many parents across the UK are calling for teachers who join these strikes to be fined.

On reading this, I’m not certain on which side of the fence I sit where teachers and their plight is concerned. On the one hand, teachers have been shortchanged for decades where salaries and working conditions are concerned. It has been one of the lowest paid professions I know of, considering that they essentially create our future working generation. Think about this for a moment. A teacher’s time does not end when your child comes home from school. Regardless of at what level teachers are teaching, they go home with stacks of papers to mark, lessons to plan and extra research to do to make themselves more effective in the classroom. It is all of that in addition to often having to deal with unruly students, the pressure of their students’ pass rates and all the extra administration that is required of them when they are not in the classroom teaching. This is an awful lot of work and teachers’ pay just does not reflect it.

Think about this as well. When there’s a 100% pass rate in a particular subject taught by a particular teacher, how many of us hear the name of the teacher? The kids’ names are all over the internet and in newspapers but there isn’t a teacher’s name in sight. If a teacher is a bad teacher, yes his or her name does sometimes get in the news. But we never hear if a teacher does well, especially when that teacher was most likely the driver for the pass rate.

On the other hand, in the last 3 years, since the pandemic in fact, children’s education has been put at a real disadvantage with cancelled classes and online teaching which can, in no way, compare to the face to face interaction of a classroom. Many questioned whether there was some sinister plot to dumb down future generations so that they ask fewer questions of those leading them. Or, at the very least, they would not have the thinking capacity to do so.

Even though online learning could never compete with in-person classes, here’s something odd that many children are claiming. They say that, oftentimes, they’ve learned more from a TikTok video than from their teachers. They’re talking about your basic subjects like English, Maths and Science. They say that a TikToker has often been better able to explain a maths or science problem than their teachers have.

You know, in all fairness, and I hate to say this, but there’s an art to teaching so that your students understand a subject enough to pass the exam.

Edward Deming, the renowned Quality Management guru, once said that if you can’t explain what you’re doing as a process then you probably don’t know what you’re doing. This is so apt when it comes to the process of teaching.

In reality there are good teachers and bad teachers. There are teachers who can explain things well and those who just can’t. I came across many teachers who were unable to explain things to us (or even handle unruly kids and class bullies). Then I had teachers who explained things so clearly and simply that it was impossible not to understand. Have you ever had this experience? The question is, why is it that some can teach and some can’t? I suppose you might say that it is what it is. But could it be that the teacher is either not very good at explaining himself or they just can’t be bothered to spend the time doing so? Some teachers teach because they’ve been forced to, because teaching was their last resort, whereas there are some who do so because they love the profession.

Teaching comes not only from the head but from the heart. And, as students, we could always tell if our teacher wanted to be there or was just there to pass the time.

All that being said, is it fair to say that teachers are putting their political beliefs before the interests of their pupils? Since when did striking because your pay is so bad that you have trouble making ends meet become a political issue? It is an economic problem. Teachers need to buy food and pay rent and utilities just like the rest of us. There’s nothing political about it. It’s very sad that it’s just being made to look political by outside forces.