Do as I say not as I do

Authority is a thinly suspended reality at the best of times. Those that espouse authority can often even be entangled in the process themselves. They themselves are often someone else’s conduit of power and vice versa. Schools are loci of power and authority; indeed, I saw many teachers get a little too much glee out of the dispensing of authority. The irony is that most students subjected to authority were also the most impervious to it. Either they were desensitised by overzealous applications of authority or had had bad experiences with authority outside of school.

So where do teachers sit in this? Some exist comfortably in this box, happy to tell students that they are not wearing a tie or that they can’t have piercings. My answer to this was not always the most academic. Frankly, I did not care about these things. Raising standards of appearance and desired learning payoff seemed a large grey area in research. Alternatively, it could often prove disruptive to learning. If I was trying to build relationships with students turned off by school, they were usually only further disengaged by authoritarian educational practices, such as pulling them up on sartorial minutia.

Another consideration is why students are wearing these things or rather not. School uniform is expensive, and shoes are an example; why mandate a different pair for a school environment? Do I change shoes in a more casual work environment? What goes for work goes for a club. So, students often likely applied the same logic based on the cost of having potentially numerous uniforms, minus the clubwear aspect. Why have one pair of black Nike’s and another pair of black school shoes? I was always intrigued when one became the other. Maybe that’s one for the fashion designers or the school leaders. That was one element of being a teacher I was always disengaged from. Authority is one thing, but authority detached from meaning formed regimes of futility.

Noise was another element of authority that was closely controlled in schools. It’s very presence treated with the same suspicion my dog treats fireworks. In other words, teachers barked and growled to maintain silence, the irony is not lost on me, but it seemed that it was often lost on them. Again, the silence seemed performative. It showed a semblance of control but was not always indicative of actual learning. Some learn in quiet spaces, but this must be tapered with the need to engage, which cannot be as easily done through the same dulcet tones; this requires debate, challenge, laughter and all-around rumbustiousness.

Schools shouldn’t be prisons. But unfortunately, they increasingly resemble them in how they seek to contain those within them. This makes the teacher’s job difficult, as many teachers are not necessarily natural rule abiders. This comes to the title and why I often felt torn between implementing rules I know I don’t follow. Here in lies some of the caginess you see within professions such as teaching, many existing behind a veil of anonymity granted to them by authority. Some may like this, and I did at times, but is it healthy? It surely can’t be, again returning to my overarching theme; teachers need to be themselves in the classroom, and authority, at least needless authority, provides another barrier to this for many. No doubt this leaves a lot of teachers, me included, internally conflicted and contradicted about implementing rules that they know full well they don’t follow or care about. Do I care what you are wearing? I don’t give a damn; do I care if you are learning? Now that’s a question I can get behind.