Teachers, especially middle and high school teachers, are burned out. And we understand. There is nothing new in this discomfort. The difference now is that this disenchantment has ceased to be a public domain secret to be reflected in qualitative analyzes of the state of the profession. This week the SM Foundation presented a devastating report that confirms the darkest of omens: that vocation does not prevent teachers from distancing themselves from their work. Let's call it disenchantment, disillusionment or frustration. And it is understandable, we wrote, from the fact that teachers do not find reward in a system that is increasingly asking 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 afar, from the period of reforms and counter-reforms, and counter-reforms of 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 same centers The cloisters no longer know what to teach or, even worse, how to do it.
The necessary conditions have been disregarded so that teachers do not come face to face with jargon that pretends to say many things, but which for them mean nothing, or they think that they will only bureaucratize them. It is assumed that for changes in education to take us somewhere, it is necessary to go down to the environments, the cloisters, the families.
Even more important than all of the above has been not giving the teaching profession the importance it has and betting on attracting young people with more abilities to it, as the countries that are leading us have done. Look at the grade cutoff marks. These have been two great outings. Pedagogues are beginning to raise their voices critical of the training with which university graduates leave, with the methodologies they study and with whom their trainers are. The master's degree in secondary teaching is fine, they add, although putting it in the hands of the last associate professor or the last available teacher in the area, who does not know secondary schools and uses it, is not just to fill the schedule. A similar thing happens with internships: without proper mentoring, they are worthless.
In addition to all this, competitive selection has become outdated and continuing education is limited to theoretical courses instead of going into day-to-day practice...
It is hard not to wonder how teachers will teach well if the conditions are not given for them to learn well, be well evaluated and be well selected. Vocation? That's right.
