Teachers - most disliked profession on mumsnet?

[OhReally18]

In the last few days, I've seen a lot of teacher bashing on mumsnet. Even teachers giving other teachers a hard time. Seems like it could be one of the most disliked professions on mn. Is this a true reflection of how the rest of society feels?

I've been teaching in primary for a good few years and I have never experienced bad feelings towards teaching in real life, just on here and social media occasionally. Maybe the odd envious comment about holidays but that's it.

It's by no means harder than other professions but teachers are portrayed as lazy, moany, hard done by, ungrateful, the list goes on...
Is this fair? Surely it's no different to other professions?

MN is in a unique perspective that any threads complaining about teachers is automatically assumed to be teacher bashing, and these types of threads regularly appear.

Like any profession there is good and bad, this is a forum primarily for parents so will have an overlay of those are service users, but only on MN is there a constant trickle of threads such as this after some service users are having ligitimate complaints about the system, these types of whiny posts usually just slope shoulder all responsibility onto the goverment as well.

But no, it isn't the disliked profession, what is more common on mn is the lack of critical thinking and the inevitable 'pity teachers posts' that you can guarantee will make the rounds after some post didn't go the way of simply off loading it into a hand's tied 'it's the gov's fault' scenario.

You are not that unique for critism and nor should you be, if you have nothing to worry about personally then stop trying to chase a victim complex, service users complain about providers all the time, it is part of your job.

Tory MP.

Could it be that there's a dislike for teachers based on people's personal bad experiences from when they were at school?
I have encountered this with parents of children I've taught.

The thing is, as a teacher you can post that you think it's not a great idea to have 30+ people squished into a small, badly ventilated room because pandemic/heatwave...

...& you might well be posting that because you know exactly how grim it is, wouldn't subject your own dc to it if it were in any way avoidable...

...& you can be perfectly willing to teach online, or offer a hybrid where students can come in if their parents really need them to whilst providing online resources for others to learn from home, or add in subsequent twilight/holiday catch up sessions or ALL of the above...

& still you'll get a certain number of very vocal posters interpreting this as 'oh they just want to skive off - stay home with their bum in the paddling pool, a chilled glass of prosecco in one hand & phone in the other to moan on mumsnet. Bunch of lazy fuckers!'

I do get that it's an emotive issue for parents. Any sniff of a school closure & we are all (teaching parents included, if different schools do different things) a bit buggered for going to work.

But it does get a tad galling when, as a classroom teacher, you a) have fuck all say in whatever is decided & b) will be the muggins re-jigging lesson content & putting in extra hours to sort the upheaval out & minimise the educational effect on dc.

Ultimately, the thing that always surprises me is that the teacher-haters don't seem to have worked out that, in the midst of a retention crisis, slagging off teachers endlessly just means that they'll be left with the thick skinned, battle hardened ones who really could not give a scooby what parents think of them, & are happy to indifferently shrug off all complaints, including the valid ones. It does always seem a bit short-sighted!

It's by no means harder than other professions but teachers are portrayed as lazy, moany, hard done by, ungrateful, the list goes on...

Do you mean the teachers are portraying themselves in that way or other posters talking about them?

It’s based on the ludicrous complaints that they’ve been posting recently, isn’t it? Reams of posts suggesting that they shouldn’t have to work when it’s hot, complaining at working in their lunch hour, saying that they should not be expected to step in when a child is being assaulted, and so on.

Presumably very few teachers are as venal, whiney and self-centred as the posts on here suggest, but it’s not surprising that some people react to what’s being posted.

Also, I saw this quote on a forum once and loved it...

On teaching:...the job seems to require the sort of skills one would need to pilot a bus full of live chickens backwards, with no brakes, down a rocky road through the Andes while simultaneously providing colorful and informative commentary on the scenery.

Franklin Habit

It's certainly not harder than other jobs but it can be as described above. Just crazy basically.

I agree with @NuffSaidSam that it’s about being a parenting forum. Being a parent is very stressful and emotional job so many of us come to MN to vent and to moan and tend to be over negative. Also we consider our DC’s successes as credit to us whereas teachers are blamed for all possible problems. In real life we try to be fair and reasonable so tend to behave normal towards teachers.

An example. Today we opened an hour early so children could be dropped off before it got hot, we said parents could collect any time after 12 to avoid the heat ( many of our children live remotely and have long walks/rides home) but we would still be open until normal time for those parents who couldn't/ didn't want to collect early. Immediately, posts started appearing on the local Facebook page claiming we were bullying parents into collecting early so we could skive off work, that we were exaggerating the heat ( we have three classrooms with glass on at least two sides and skylights which the sun streams through. It reached 36 degrees in one class. ) and one parent declared that they would be deliberately collecting late to " teach us a lesson"

I'm not really referring specifically to the recent heat and teaching posts. Although one of them was horrible to read some of the comments. It's just a general dislike I've noticed over the last few years on mumsnet.

where are all these tiny cramped classrooms overflowing with way more children than I've heard of?

And why is it only being mentioned now?

Social workers and health visitors are hated far more and none of either group regularly starts threads about it.

Mumsnet makes me dislike teachers and junior doctors despite, in real life, being the normal amount of 'pro' both professions.

I really can't stand the 'AIBU to tell you what life is REALLY LIKE' threads. Yes, you are being unreasonable, fuck off. I wish someone with an interesting or unusual job would do one. AIBU to tell you what life is REALLY LIKE as a deep sea fisherman.

So, there's that.

Most people on here have children so they've come across lots of teachers so there is increased likelihood that theyll meet some practices they don't like. More teachers = equals more people to disagree with.
In contrast I don't see many people with good things to say about estate agents. But we don't sell houses very iften and when we do, we just deal with one so there are not so many to complain about.

Hmm, and yet there's a recruitment and retention crisis!
I wonder why?
OP, I don't know if you really are a teacher but if so, starting this thread was a really foolish thing to do.

Nobody actually says any of that though. It's in your head. And proves the OP's point.

@OhReally18 honestly, mate, quotes like that are why everyone hates you.

The mêmes on fbook from my ex teacher friends have reduced in recent months : you know, the one with a perfect, cap n gown owl in spectacales at the beginning of the year to a frazzled, exhausted owl at the end of the year, captioned 'teachers in August, teachers in june' or whatever. Followed by loads of emojis.

I reckon they've read the room

That's awful! What a strange attitude to say 'teach us a lesson'

No, on here it’s based on the ludicrous things that they post. Near the top has to be the ridiculous claim that they work harder than other jobs.

My parents have had no contact with any teachers for years but they read right wing papers that have an interest in whipping up anti teacher sentiment to distract people from under funding of schools/pupils and poor treatment of teachers by the government. So they talk about nonsense they've read that bears no relation to what I've experienced of teachers in my kids' schools. Eg. Work shy.
I have a lot of respect for the vast majority of teachers my kids have had who are hard working. You'd get the impression that most mumsnetters hate teachers, but it's just that the vitriolic ones shout the loudest.
It's like when there's a poll on a thread and 90% of posters will vote one way, but the 10% will aggressively dominate the thread. The 90% tells the real story of what people think.

@cardibach

Ummmm.

No.

Not in head. It's said loads

There was a post the other day where a teacher was really annoyed, going on about how they never got a holiday and worked every day of the pandemic.

That's just one example.

Everywhere, and it's been mentioned a lot. You've clearly been living under a rock for a very long time.

But it’s not remotely like that nor does it require vaguely similar skills unless you work in a particularly dangerous school where you could all end up dead at any given moment