At the chalkface: If you liked school…

There’s a resonant cartoon about the modern workplace doing the rounds. Androids are shut in cubicles drudging away at computers. They’re on task, on Sisyphean task, in a vast, Orwellian, open-plan hell. There’s nowhere to hide. They can’t go off message or off task – off trolley seems the only option. The serfs embrace their servitude.

“If you liked school,” goes the caption, “you’ll love work.” Has it really come to this? Is education now merely about getting a job? Nothing else? Is the classroom no more than a simulacrum of the modern workplace? It would seem so.

My generation was lucky. Education was exciting, questioning and free. They paid me to go university. There were many jobs afterwards. I did all kinds, before buckling down to the genteel poverty of English teaching. We were trusted to do whatever we wanted in our classrooms. It was exhilarating.