In a past life I was a teacher - being Head Teacher of English and, in my later career as a "chalkie", a Head Teacher of History.
After leaving school, I (and many other teachers of my 'vintage') was offered a Commonwealth Scholarship. Such scholarships were awarded on the basis of merit and were eagerly sought after. As a Commonwealth Scholarship recipient one could have taken a career path in Law, Architecture, Medicine, Science or any of the more well reumnerated professions.
My reasons for chosing teaching as a profession were altruistic rather than fiscal. The salary, however, at that time was no where near as pathetic as it is now. Back in 1974/5 teachers' wages were on a par with the wages of engineers. Sadly, this is no longer the case.
With the reluctance of State governments to adequately renumerate teachers is it no wonder that 'good' teachers began to leave the profession? The political solution was to lower the matriculation score for school leavers to 'attract' them into teaching. The result? Many young teachers came through the system who were of only mediocre academic standing. As a Head Teacher, responsible for staff in one's Faculty, this posed an additional strain and workload.
Teaching is not an easy job - especially when faced with the academic demands of senior classes and the difficulties often associated with casting 'pearls of wisdom' before rebellious pubescent teenagers many of whom, in the early years of secondary school, are decidedly anitpathetic towards authority and learning. Poorly qualified teachers (with low tertiary entrance scores) quite often don't have the intellectual facility to cope with the demands of the job.
So .... whose fault is that? It needs to be squarely laid at the feet of our political masters who decided that the way to attract teachers into the profession was not to offer attractive salaries but, instead to lower the tertiary entrance qualifications to enter the profession.
On the question of grammar it became fashionable to do away with rigour and formality. Many "Educators" who lectured in Teachers Colleges were in fact refugees from the classroom who could not "cut it" at the chalk face. (there were some good ones but, by and large, the quality of these 'teacher educators' suffered a steady decline). This was probably not helped by the increasing "femmininsation" of the profession. I have nothing against competent females in education - and there are many of them who do a great job. However, many females entered the profession while males were looking elsewhere for more highly paid jobs. Why so? It dovetailed nicely with raising children - the hours and holidays suited the "mother-teacher". Also, it was a job that women could easily return to after having children. Most casual teachers also happen to be female for very much the same reasons.
But I digress somewhat .... so, back to the "grammar issue". The philosophy (because of mediocre educators) in the Teachers Colleges was "education should be fun". Entertain rather than bore students with the nuts and bolts of parsing and analysis. No longer were teachers educated in the use of gerunds, split infinitives, noun clauses in apposition and the like.
And as these teachers graduated and took up positions in the classroom their students were not schooled in the art of grammar. Many older teachers had to throw away their now redundant Nesbitt's "Handbook of English Grammar" as the teaching of grammar became akin to being trying to teach "Martian" or some alien language.
So whole generations of students have grown up without a traditional knowledge of the "Queen's English".
So when our political masters in their wisdom decided to try and turn things around they found that the majority of teachers had precious little knowledge of formal grammar. They tried a form of "newspeak" ... user friendly terms to define grammatical functions and components. But all that did was to create new confusions. Those schooled in the 'old' formal grammar resented the new 'trendy', and often flawed, approach.
So, often there was a situation of the blind leading the blind. Teachers were often caught up in a confusing morass not of their own making.
Are teachers overpaid? You pay moonkeys and you get peanuts? Pay rates need to be dramatically increased to attract quality teachers and competition for entry places into education faculties in universities will assuredly follow.
It's hard to turn the "Queen Mary" around but a starting point has to be adequate fiscal renumeration for teachers. Teaching is a self weeding garden - the weak have trouble surviving, the mediocre might cope ..... but we need to attract the very best.
Teacher bashing is not the answer - higher pay rates are long overdue and their effect on quality teaching may not be instant but, over time will achieve the desired outcome.
