@thefallthroughtheair
starfish that's so true. Of teaching and other jobs too. The constant proving that you're achieving a standardised set of aims and outcomes. Governments and professional bodies constantly involving themselves in professional minutiae. And the side effect of that I think is that quite often the ones who rise towards the top are the expert form-fillers and self-aggrandisers, and that totally changes the feel of a workplace over time and makes it far harder for some of the more eccentric people, or those with a genuine vocation, to really get ahead in a world of paperwork and toeing the line.
You've described my departure from teaching
I'm probably a bit marmite, and would probably have thrived better in the more maverick days of the 70s-90s. I'm a bit eccentric anyway. Add in the physical build and intimidation level of a y7, and often doing long term supply in difficult schools/ areas and going into to disillusioned classes part-way through the year. I was bloody good at that and working my eccentric charms with humour. Professor McGonagal, I am not. Some schools I fitted in with. Some just really didn't get me.
I went in to teaching because I love young people, my subject and kearning. I wanted an interesting, creative job. I did not want an office job, and that's what it was turning into,with pupils being an annoyance at not conveniently generating the right data patterns on the spreadsheets to serve a school's political purpose. At the point of leaving, teaching was less than half my work time.
And as a parent, I've produced at least one child that doesn't neatly fit statistical patterns. That in itself does not concern me; it's the culture and resourcing of schools to cater for the square pegs... or dodecahedrons in his case
Far too much politics involved in the public sector and I'm losing hope of a culture change swinging back.