Teachers, especially middle and high school teachers, are burned out. And it is understood. There is nothing new in this malaise, only now the difference is that it is no longer an open secret but is reflected in qualitative analyzes of the state of the profession.
This week the SM Foundation has presented a devastating report that confirms the darkest of omens: that the vocation does not prevent teachers from distancing themselves from their work. Call it disenchantment, disappointment or frustration. And it is understandable, we wrote, because teachers do not find reward in a system that increasingly asks them for more for less, with new realities in the classroom that they cannot control and without sufficient institutional or family support.
This situation has been reached for several reasons. The first comes from a long time ago, from the period of reforms and counter-reforms, and counter-reforms of the reforms... As in the famous weaving and unweaving of Penelope, the lack of legislative stability has ended up transferring a pedagogical and professional (and ideological) confrontation to the own centers. The faculty no longer knows what to teach or, worse, how to do it.
The necessary conditions have been neglected so that teachers and schools do not come face to face with jargon that claims to say many things, but that means nothing to them, or they think that it will only bureaucratize them. It is assumed that for the changes in education to take us somewhere, we have to go down to the environments, to the cloisters, to the families.
Even more important than all of the above has been not giving the teaching profession the importance it has and not betting on attracting young people with more abilities to it, as countries that are ahead of us have done. Look at the grade cut-off marks. These have been two big oversights. Pedagogues critical of the training that graduates receive, the methodologies they study and who their trainers are are beginning to raise their voices. The secondary school teacher's master's degree is good, they add, although it is not good to put it in the hands of the last associate teacher or the last available teacher in the area, who does not know the secondary schools and uses it only to fill in the schedule. Something similar happens with internships: without adequate tutoring, they are of little use.
In addition to all this, selection by competitive examinations has become outdated and continuing training is limited to theoretical courses instead of day-to-day practice...
It is difficult not to wonder how teachers are going to teach well if the conditions are not met for them to learn well, be well evaluated and be well selected. Vocation? It's almost the least of it.
