There follows a guest post from a teacher, who was moved to write after reading the recent article by teacher Fraser Krats on coping with Covid measures in school.
A friend recommended I read Fraser Krats’s article as I am also a teacher – I teach at a secondary grammar school in Kent. I wanted to write as I was struck by the tone in Mr. Krats’s last sentence where he says that “I just feel alone”.
I have felt like this the two years I have been teaching at this school (I started in September 2020). I wore a mask exempt badge and, when the mask mandates were removed and some started removing their masks, I made it a point to tell students how wonderful it was to see their faces again. I will never forget one moment at this school, when I was feeling desperately alone (this was when facemask-wearing was in full swing) and I walked past a student in the corridor who was also wearing a mask exempt badge – she gave me a lovely smile and it cheered me up right away. I will never forget this.
I left the union because I could not stand how they kept reinforcing mask wearing and when I told staff why I had left the union they just ignored what I said, like I hadn’t said it, and continued with their day.
Staff would sit in the department office and do tests in front of each other, one using his computer screen to make certain the cotton bud went up his nose far enough (I was hoping this would touch a nerve in his brain and stimulate some independent thought, but sadly it did not). Used testing strips were always left lying on the desks in this communal office – logic and reason apparently was not.
I have resigned from my position now and am leaving without a job to go to. I made this decision because I was asked by a member of the safeguarding team to delete emails about a child who was ‘changing her gender’ (it does seem like an awful lot of children have been affected by this recently) in case the parents did a GDPR call as they are unsupportive. I am not the only teacher who has been asked to delete emails – and for different children.
I do not want to teach in state schools anymore. I have felt very alone the last two years. I have no friends at work. I feel like I am fighting all the time and I am also tired.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Keep teaching, anonymous. The “education system” is not for you.
Have you read “Deschooling Society”, by Ivan Illich?
What does school really teach children?
1. Truth comes from authority.
2. Intelligence is the ability to remember and repeat.
3. Accurate memory and repetition are rewarded.
4. Non-compliance is punished.
5. Conform – intellectually and socially.
Your story resonates with much of my own experience as a university lecturer. Of course, almost all of our teaching moved to zoom but I made a point of telling my students that in my view they weren’t receiving a fully developed education as a result. When we were permitted to return to in person teaching, I too wore an exemption lanyard and refused to enforce mask wearing in class. I too left our union, the UCU, for the same reasons you left yours – the perverse, ever escalating obstacles to us going back to in person teaching including the risible demand that we be issued with personal CO2 monitors, be given the right to cancel lectures at the moment they gave a reading over a certain level, to enforce the personal sanitisation of desks by students and the rest of the nonsense. All of this went beyond the legitimate purpose of a trade union and veered into an assault on our professional and ethical responsibilities to our students. I spoke up to colleagues in online forums but, with a couple of exceptions, like you was met by silence. It struck me that many of them were not simply happy to stay at home but that compliance was their creepy, overriding goal. What our political, public health and education classes did to the population is unforgivable but that so many were complicit in their own oppression is chilling.
Thank you for your post.
Best wishes.
Possibly the most chilling comment I heard from a colleague was during a zoom staff meeting in the early stages of the first mask mandate. This person proclaimed to us proudly in terms that made clear he was signalling perceived virtue, that he, a 30 something bloke built like a rugby forward, had ‘challenged’ (bullied) an elderly, maskless woman in his local supermarket. Again, only I spoke up, saying, quite mildly, ‘come on. Don’t be that guy. That’s not you’. Thing is, maybe I was wrong. It was likely him – lockdown brought out the inner fascist bully in far too many of us.
Dear Anonymous
You sound to me like an educator; someone who wants to develop and bring out the best possible results in your students. It is encouraging that the “teaching profession” still retains some people like you within its ranks.
However, you really do have no future in the State Indoctrination System and I believe you have made the right decision in leaving it.
I hope you find your rightful place as an educator in a facility that appreciates your abilities and values.
Good luck.
Seconded.
I wish I had a helpful response.
Hopefully things will improve for you.
All the best.
Whoever the lame arse doing the downticking is I believe you need some help because you are seriously not well. Have a go at me personally by all means but criticising all the other uptickers, which you are doing indirectly by downticking me and RTSC, and others, shows you lack intelligence as well as guts.
You are a coward and cowards do not belong on this site.
Furthermore, a teacher makes a post from the heart, somebody who is having their life destroyed by the madness enveloping us and you cannot lend at least the tiniest bit of support by way of a few kind words. You are as rotten and evil as our oppressors. What warped logic keeps you on this site?
A miserable example of humanity you must be.
Hear hear! It’s clearly someone with a warped mind and they are obviously in dire need of help.
Thank you Epi.
We need to fight this corrupt evil with every tool we have. Maks wearing is so inhuman and unnatural. That is why the globalist like it. You still see people wearing maske the their haunted faces.
They never seems ask themselves “how come all these people aren’t dropping dead when they are not wearing masks?” or “how come this flimsy mask protect me from the deadliest disease in history?”
Yellow Boards By The Road Stand for Freedom
Blind trust in authority is the greatest enemy of the Truth
Monday 11th July 3pm to 4pm
Yellow Boards
Junction A321 Sandhurst Rd &
Nine Mile Ride Finchampstead
Wokingham RG40 3LT
Tuesday 12th July 11am to 12pm
Yellow Boards
Junction Bagshot Road A322
& New Forest Ride
Bracknell RG12 7JQ
****
Stand in the Park Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am make friends & keep sane
Wokingham
Howard Palmer Gardens Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Bracknell
South Hill Park, Rear Lawn, RG12 7PA
Henley
Mills Meadows (bandstand) RG9 1DS
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Best wishes
I work in a school and empathise I have been asked to stay silent by the head “rists slapped” as I said babies did not need assigning in a lesson! about my concerns over this gender ideology.
I am staying for now to try and push back but it is as you say tiring.
During the latest news that there is an increase in cases our Head, emailed revised guidelines saying people can wear masks again if they like. And then it has started again, the compliant walking around in front of students with masks.
Ubelievable and unforgivable .
Sorry to be a pernickety but isn’t ‘wrists’ spelled with a ‘w’? Would have thought being in education …..
Just saying
Yes sorry rushing
I popped an s in by accident 
Friendly banter
Glad you spelt persnickety and not me
You are a Person of Principle. Well done for your bravery in leaving.I hope you find another school to teach in that you like. Avoid FE as it is as bad, if not worse, than the state education system as the Unions are in charge and as such the situation in staff rooms can be toxic if you are not a disciple.
Best wishes and good luck for the future.
Thank you, Anonymous, for sharing this with us. How hideous it has all been for us all (those of us who have seen events for what they really are), but to be asked to delete emails about a child’s change of gender so that the parents wouldn’t see them is so appalling that I am dumbstruck! It is evil beyond measure. If only parents talked more to their children, took meals with them, stopped them having so much screen time, etc etc. Imagine not realising that your precious child is going through such a life-changing event without even realising – and the school to be aiding and abetting is beyond evil. You will be an enormous loss to that school (for those few students who you might have been able to help or encourage, eg the one who smiled at you – you probably were a great encouragement to her too), but I understand how you cannot agree to such betrayals of parents’ trust any more. I pray that you find a fulfilling job for the future.
I am so sorry for what you have experienced. For people who actually think the last two years have indeed been utterly exhausting. I wish you all the best for the future.