Diary of an Irish Teacher: Do we trust teachers as an expert group?

Jennifer Horgan: The chapter got me thinking about my role as a teacher. Am I an expert

Post-pandemic, what needs to change? Well, everything, according to Vittorio Bufacchi. In fact, it’s the title of his latest book: Everything must Change.

The writer taught me in college, so I was keen to read it, but I’d recommend it to anyone. It’s a digestible and thoughtful book, detailing the many injustices highlighted by the pandemic and suggesting where we might go from here.

One topic caught my attention – the role of experts in society. In whom do we place our trust? How secure is it?

The chapter got me thinking about my role as a teacher. Am I an expert?

Bufacchi explores how knowledge often travels along fudged lines, the journey it takes from experts in the field to politicians, to people in the media, to us. Our relationship with expertise and knowledge isn’t an easy one, he tells us.

The rise of populism in the United States and Great Britain confirms how easily trust in experts fades. Bufacchi cites Michael Gove’s reported assertion that ‘people in this country have had enough of experts.’ Closer to home, we’re reminded of Leo Varadkar’s public criticism of Nphet, his claim on national TV that their recommendations hadn’t been ‘thought through.’

But overall, he reminds us, we’re good at recognising them: ‘People who have a tooth problem still want an expert dentist rather than a car mechanic.’ He’s right. We all see mechanics, electricians, engineers, solicitors, and doctors as experts in their trades. This is why we’ll spend money on such services. It’s why we hold them in high regard – we give credit where credit is due.

His chapter ends with the hope that universities and experts will be listened to in a spirit of increased trust in future. He suggests ‘a rehabilitation of experts and universities as deserving of society’s trust and respect, and of course adequate funding.’

I share his concerns and his convictions. I hope Ireland doesn’t become a flabby country wherein the sound of a fool shouting emotively drowns out the advice of an expert with expert credentials.

I’m unsurprised that Bufacchi can’t suggest teachers as an expert group. In his talk of expertise and knowledge, they don’t figure.

It makes sense. Teachers, the people to whom we entrust our young people every day, aren’t associated with any kind of expertise. Even our inspectors treat us like children, sitting in a separate room pouring over school documents, avoiding our eyes until the inspection is over.

Anyone can be a teacher, right? We’re only in it for the holidays.

I wonder if our trust in teachers has increased or decreased over the course of Covid. I suspect it depends on who you ask. Newspapers reported the claim that teacher unions were looking for bonuses last week with considerable relish. It’s certainly alarming how easily and how often we’re vilified as a group.

This lack of regard predates Covid of course, largely because we’ve chipped away at the role of the teacher for decades. It’s become minuscule, entirely gobbled up by the Leaving, the points race, the media fanfare.

Those in my tribe who are seen as experts, work in grind schools or fee-paying schools and institutes. They’re experts on the Leaving Cert. They’ll teach students how to jump through those hoops in exactly the right way, how high and for how long. And so, parents throw money at them.

That’s the only expertise we seem to claim at secondary level. We know how to get points in a meaningless race, one fixed against students before it even starts.

Is there any way we might be viewed as experts in the future? Marking our own work might help. But I worry that unions won’t represent me on that front. President of ASTI Eamon Dennehy still claims it would make me a ‘judge, jury and if it comes to it, executioner.’ I honestly don’t know what he means. I would mark from an objective marking scheme. I would know my student better than anyone. I would be a fair-minded and trusted professional.

Working together in departments, autonomously, coming together to moderate work regularly – that is my post-pandemic vision for teachers as experts.

It would really be something if the people trained to teach, the people who study the process of learning, took education back from the system – the CAO, the SEC, union representatives, whoever.

For now, I accept that we’ve neither power nor trust in the public eye; I intend to talk about it until we do. Because Bufacchi is spot on. Everything must change.