I was a teacher for a lot of years.

If this character really wants to be teacher - they'd better get used to lifetime of propitiating idiots, and trying to 'look like a teacher'. The Role of the Teacher 101 - perhaps they don't do that course in colleges any more.

The kids expect it, the politicians, the parents....and they watch you like a hawk for any deviation from the path of dull conformity or harmless dottiness.

This is why nobody has noticed that our children don't learn to read any more, and know damn all about the history of their own country. They're too busy spying on the teachers to report infractions of the code of orthodoxy.

In my day we were taught by gentlemen with frayed cuffs, some of whom were borderline violent pschopaths - and many of them were crap teachers, but in those days there wasn't a squeak of complaint from any quarter. During Margaret Thatcher/Keith Joseph's reign - there was some attempt turn the clock back to this golden era, where everybody at least knew they had encountered a teacher - even if they hadn't actually encountered any education.

When is someone going to have the sheer energy to approach the school system with Cromwellian zeal and demand teachers with real expertise in teaching - rather than endlessly bitching about what they look like and act like.

For as long as I've been around - the situation is like if you hired someone to rewire your house and you kept bitching about the state of his overalls.