INTRODUCTION
Let's face it, we're living in a fake reality that is so narcotic it's often impossible to remember or imagine much else. Wars and plagues once ended such illusions but now deepen them. Only serious illness forces one into another existence. Of course, this applies mostly to the middle classes. But to which of their professions, in particular? Teaching is close to the top; the job I left in spring 2023. It's perfect for commentary because the day-to-day work is unavoidably real, reinforcing the need many teachers have for constant yet ineffectual denial.
Hopefully, none of this is new or original - at least not to sentient adults. For children, the essential thing is to show them they're being indoctrinated and allow them to realise another way of thinking is possible. In truth, most instinctively sense there's something wrong with many of their teachers - some of whom are one step (or less) away from idiocy or madness.
It starts where?
In teacher training, which only a masochist would want to describe, so pointless yet demanding is the process. You can no more truly train a teacher than you can a parent. But that's not the purpose of these courses. They exist in order to exist and provide employment for those who escape teaching. Their intellectual content is zero (possibly negative) based on qualitative 'evidence-based studies', pseudo-scientific theories and totalitarian methods, like behaviourism.
An example?
A diversity-awareness course from a subject consultant - a science teacher, who worked for an exam board - on reflecting multiculturalism in the curriculum. The startling news that: 'Gravity wasn't invented by Newton but by Africans.' When the absurdity of this statement was highlighted by yours truly, I was told: 'It can be difficult for people to move on from their Eurocentric views.' 
In mitigation, the lady was a biology teacher who believed that Darwin's On the Origin of Species (published 1859) was written to justify the slave trade in the British Empire (abolished 1833). When this inconvenient chronology was questioned, she angrily replied: 'You deliberately misunderstand the point I'm making'. I was reprimanded for 'not appreciating the need for educational diversity' - i.e. by introducing reality.
Teacher training is an exemplar for what's wrong with left-liberal fantasy thinking and its attempt to control and reconstruct society. It's difficult to decide which is more alarming: the overt nonsense being peddled or the stupidity of those peddling it. Even more sinister is the realisation that many know such thinking is ridiculous, but keep shtum.
Anyway, I'll describe in detail my first year in the job, before I knew anything about how to teach.
BEING AN NQT (NEWLY QUALIFIED TEACHER)
I: THE NAME GAME
The best way to start this is allowing memory to select, undirected and unchecked, my experiences. The only selection applied will be in roughly balancing good and bad ones. I've many more of the former, despite my negative introduction and the fact I'm naturally drawn to the disastrous in life.
The purpose of an account like this is to be honestly critical, not least because most teachers' reminiscences are egotistical and worthy - in essence, dishonest. It's also done to allow humour (the essential element in a teacher and their teaching) to lighten things.
My first memory is of perusing class lists, reading them slowly and thinking about the names. Just imagine a situation where you're given 200 new ones, all of them important to your immediate future. Anyone remotely creative or inquisitive would start speculating and constructing characters and situations, imagining attitudes and behaviour.
To be more honest, I was looking for Christian names which my PGCE experience said suggested trouble. Teaching is perhaps the most class-conscious profession one can enter. First-names are vital in how that occurs, but in a more subtle way than may be supposed. Still, it's no exaggeration to say that most teachers operate a watch-list:
a. Obvious dangers: Ryan; Kyle; Shane; Robyn; Paige; Becca (plus annoying variants).
b. Deceptive dangers: Jack; Nathanial; Tobias; Chloe, Charlotte; Emilia (plus annoying variants).
c. Dangerous parents: Daniel; William; Riley; Samantha; Clarissa; Maxine.
d. Probably safe: Matthew; George; Tom; Emily; Susan; Heather.
e. Probably weird: Blue; Judas; Travis; Summer; Savannah; Tabitha.
It's not true that this divides neatly along working-class and middle-class lines. A significant factor is the showiness of the name, its 'pushiness'. Truly ethnic names I find difficult to generalise about, though overtly Islamic ones need to be noted for likely difficulties around freedom of speech, on religion in lessons.
Anyone who's read this far won't be surprised I make no apology for 'offence' caused by a crude analysis. It's based on subjective experience, unfiltered by concern on stereotyping. Nor do I consider causality from family privilege. My sole purpose is describing with honesty what I've seen and done.
Because teachers look very carefully at names, not least when creating their dreaded 'seating plans' - and boy did I fuck up in my early attempts.
Group 9a1, Monday afternoon, period 5: my first of many nightmares with them, ending in a riot and evacuation.
II: THE NIGHTMARE GROUP
I learnt more from 9a1 than anything else, either in training or subsequent teaching. If I'm honest, I doubt any of them could say anything as positive about me - and I wouldn't blame them.
It's important I accept responsibility for the utter mess created. All of my inexperience and misplaced use of teacher-training 'behaviour management' techniques combined, to disastrous effect. Add in how I was allocated five different rooms - spread confusingly over the school-site - and it was a perfect storm. I still squirm when recalling the catalogue of catastrophes. It's the only group I ever walked out on.
As so often, it started by mistakenly taking advice; this time from their Year 8 teacher. My antennae should have been up when this gushing individual sought me out, explaining how much she'd loved (and been adored by) this 'difficult but rewarding' bunch. Ostensibly a top set, I was told it was packed full of 'adorable but challenging girls from lower groups.'
That's one way of putting it. I was given a list of them, with character assessments and even family backgrounds, like some synopsis for a frightful soap opera soon to involve me.
'Robyn is lovely but comes from a services family - she's angry and argumentative. Mum is an aggressive Glaswegian who drinks.'
'Becky is lovely but can't shut up and often expresses herself physically. She needs to be away from movable objects and everybody else.'
'Sarah is lovely but manipulative and dishonest. She lives way out in the countryside so school is her only social interaction, particularly English lessons.'
Other names and pathologies followed, with advice on the seating plan in such detail it was like something from my doctoral studies in laser chemistry. If only I'd just gone with my gut-instinct and done random boy/girl desks - something I never again deviated from.
I approached my first lesson buzzing with advice and caffeine. The venue was a claustrophobic end-of-corridor dump - of course a Modern Foreign Languages room - laid out to make my seating plan useless. As usual, it was a five-minute wait in the corridor for the previous group to exit.
Attempts at small-talk seemed pointless. Foolishly, I demanded a silent line-up and found myself impersonating drill-sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket.
Chaos, before we'd even entered FL01.
III: THE HORROR, THE HORROR
All teaching is a performance, although how performative it seems (both to them and you) is the key to its success. When I got better at it, I was acting the whole time - but naturally. As with anyone on stage, the basic essential is 'know your audience'. Given my briefing by their former teacher, you might mistakenly think that I did. Nope. You never remotely do until you've taught them for at least a month.
Ever seen a stand-up comedian 'die' on stage? It's the most excruciating experience, especially the femtosecond when both they and you realise it's happening. Echoing, torturing silence descends, truncated by an ominous and growing murmur. If one's lucky, the poor sod then exists stage left, knowing the situation is hopeless. If one isn't, you witness their death-throes; the mounting desperation and anger from a 'comedian' as they flail around, hopelessly sinking.
One I saw was reduced to screaming at the crowd: 'I'm funny! You are not!' He was led off, a gibbering wreck - Jeff Davies, a humourless regular on the frightful BBC shows Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Have I got News for You. Rest assured, he didn't seem so smug at Centrica's annual party in 1997, his arse and nuts served up to him in agonising slow motion.
Any honest teacher will admit they've been there, except that no exit is possible unless one takes my drastic action (four months later) of actually walking out. On which, much much more later.
We entered FL01 as a rushing and shoving mob, and my position was already lost. Someone once said the longest walk in the world is that of a new teacher to the front of a class. It never seemed more so; I'd honestly have preferred ascending the scaffold. What mad impulse led me to stick rigidly to my useless seating plan, revealing in dazzling headlights all of my spoon-fed prejudices about them? I might as well have read out a detailed character assassination of all the trouble-makers.
My starter lasted about fifty of the fifty-five minutes remaining. In truth, it was utter crap. A 'get to know you' pair/groupwork exercise, morphing into different story starts, rendered grimly ironic by my certainty I knew all I'd ever want to about this bunch. I was reduced to having them reorganize the desks into pairs and eventually sitting in my doomed seating plan.
The Deputy Head walked in as I was starting a game of 'heads down, thumbs up', the despairing teaching equivalent of prisoners picking oakum or running the treadmill. At least they were all smiling. 'Dr Sutton, I see you've met your top-set,' she snapped and left, to cat-calls and hilarity. The bell went and I collapsed at the front, staring vacantly at the litter-strewn ‘teaching outcome’ from my first lesson with them.
The door to FL01 opened again. Its usual occupant entered, smiling in that sickly way only teachers do. 'Hi! Would you mind putting the desks back into their proper layout? That’s how my seating plans work.'
IV: IT'S A LONG GAME
Jeff Davies' 'dressing-room', immediately after his disastrous Centrica stand-up routine. He sits staring vacantly into the desolate ennui of an open-plan office bedecked in Xmas lights, trying to persuade himself he was funny and his audience were not. His manager nervously approaches. 'Cheer up Jeff, that was your first attempt with them - it'll be better next time.' 'Next time? Jesus Christ, there's no way I'm coming back.' 'I'm afraid you've got them eight times every two-week cycle...'
That's the thing about a core subject like English. However appallingly the lesson goes, you're teaching them again tomorrow - probably first thing. This horrific realisation kick-started the 'fuck-it' attitude mostly dormant in me. In fact, this approach is above all what any teacher needs. It sounds paradoxical but there's huge merit in simply turning up, day in day out - in not getting beaten down. Thick-skinned endurance is the most vital requirement for any teacher. I almost felt Churchillian as I recollected his words:
'Defeat is never fatal. Victory is never final. It’s the courage to continue that counts.'
Fearing this was delusional bullshit, I nervously checked my time-table. The next location was U25, thankfully in two days’ time. The room was absent from any school plan and the knowledge of every teacher I asked. Eventually, the lugubrious head of DT (is there another sort?) revealed this mystery cavern was hidden behind his workshop, almost inaccessible without caving equipment.
I then encountered my first bit of genuine kindness and luck. My Head of Department overheard the gloomy exchange and took me aside, offering to let me use his room for every lessons with 9a1. He'd heard about my nightmare and airily brushed it aside - 'You did nothing wrong, I've heard good reports from some of the pupils.' Unsure if this was gallows-humour, drugs or drunkenness, I was too relieved to worry. 'I'll check your seating plan before the next lesson, if it helps?'
The next survival mechanism for my NQT year miraculously kicked in: Go along with any advice from the management who'll pass or fail you - even if just in appearance. 'Well, maybe you could actually redo mine and the lesson-plan?' He readily agreed.
Meanwhile, I met the group I above all loved teaching and had for the next five years - and the delinquent Year 11b5 GCSE group I'd inherited. Apparently, my loud voice and a height of 6' 1" had been sufficient qualification. Their previous teacher was an Australian who taught art, music, Spanish, French, games, PSHE - and probably surfing. It cheered me immensely that this likable bloke avoided a gushing account and warned me the group housed some of the biggest yobs in perhaps the worst year-group the school had ever seen.
As ever, reality was more welcome than illusion.
V: ASSESSMENT FOR ASSESSMENT'S SAKE
Perhaps the worst feature of contemporary teaching is its obsessive managerialism and unshakable faith in 'quantitative evidence'. The assessing and categorizing of pupils dominates everything. These become ends in themselves, not elements in a broader education. That ideal has almost disappeared, regarded as outdated if not conservative (an unforgivable sin).
There's also little interest in building pupils' characters and instilling a sense of right and wrong, which would be regarded as a return to the 19th century and British imperialism. Instead, they're hectored with dogmatic social-justice slogans on diversity, racism, equality, respect, difference, transgenderism...you name it.
Skinnerian behaviourism - treating pupils as machines to be programmed through rewards, shaming and sanctions - replaces the subtle moral framework that used to exist, however imperfectly. Because the very idea that it existed was enough - and that's gone now. This is hugely damaging to pupils. It's small-wonder bullying is so ineradicable and behaviour is often unmanageable. Everything is linked to social issues around creating a fairer society, often at the expense of resolving individual problems. The effects are as bad on teachers, though they're in the environment through choice. It ensures the very worst types of virtue-signalling box-tickers advance into management and so perpetuate the system.
The horrors of near-constant pupil assessment will be familiar to any parent. What will be less apparent are the effects of categorisation, with constant discussion of the many labels being attached to them - especially in terms of ability and race.
Thankfully, I had one group where I determinedly did my own thing, from Year 8 to Year 11 (and some into the sixth-form). 8b2 were immediately below the supposedly 'Gifted and Talented' (GATE) set - an example of absurd labelling based on assessments. Mine considerably outperformed the higher group in Year 9 SATs and their GCSEs, whatever the categorisation suggested. I won't claim any great teaching ability, simply continuity and an old-fashioned approach they liked. In other words, very little group-work, let alone peer or self-assessment.
VI: BOTTOM SET YEAR 11
Taking over a GCSE group in Year 11 is ‘challenging’, to use the education-speak euphemism for horrific. Especially so for an NQT, and double-especially so for teaching the lowest set actually doing GCSE. Also ‘challenging’ was how they were sitting English Language (the vital one) early, in November, so that if one of them went completely off the rails before the summer of Year 11, they might have this qualification when expelled - as two of them were.
This meant I had barely two months to get them ready, whilst also starting their modern novel for English Literature - Of Mice and Men - which I can now almost recite word for word, but always loved teaching. To be fair, it was to my advantage that everyone thought this timetabling was nuts; the explanation being that I was male, tall and had a strong voice.
11b5 was - as are most bottom sets - small, at eighteen pupils. But what it lacked in quantity it made up for in quality. Twelve boys, six of them wannabe football hooligans obsessed with films like Green Street and with their own daft version of its gang - the ‘Sheep Street Elite’ - named for the grotty chain-pub/discount-store area of Bicester. From my experiences at a fairly rough comp in the mid 1970s, I sometimes found this an oddly nostalgic throwback.
The five girls were well-behaved but intimidated (or foolishly impressed) by the louts. Two of them were horribly bullied by the twin-boys who I fought constant battles with - once inadvertently calling them scumbag cowards. This landed me in serious trouble, though their mother eventually relented, and I survived.
I actually enjoyed this group and learned a huge amount. My first lesson was riotous - one of them squared up to me - which only happened twice in my career. A stroke of luck, as Sean had a history of carrying concealed knives on the school-bus and spent every lesson shouting out ‘alphabet soup.’ It put a marker down that couldn’t be denied! Within two weeks, he was banished to the ‘bungalow’. A building on the school’s periphery serving as a penal colony for those incapable of being in classrooms but not yet qualifying for expulsion - a hurdle requiring crimes of almost unimaginable depravity.
Oddly, I never truly dreaded lessons with this lot. All bets were off, and I set myself the simple (in terms of scope) but daunting task of getting through the material and responding to any attempted intimidation.
Every lesson saw at least three pupils ‘on-called’ - removed by the off-duty staff waiting to pick up the impossibly disruptive. With the worst I did this very promptly, often pushing its ‘fairness’. This made me a hate-figure to some but I make no apologies; I was determined to get a GCSE C-grade - a pass - for those desperate to gain this qualification. I’m proud to say that fourteen of them did, a higher pass-rate than the predicted 50%.
Whenever I was observed with this group, I was bombarded with advice by those who’d made damn sure they never had to teach them. Such is the norm. Indeed, my favourite fellow-teacher was a Sudanese chap who was routinely given only bottom sets, where his teaching was constantly undermined.
He taught for years without complaint, before being quietly forced out without a word of thanks (or goodbye) from the school. His treatment was typical of how many left-liberals actually behave. Schools are possibly where this happens the most.