When teachers turn clerks

Stress. That deadly six-letter word every one of us is acquainted with. In quieter moments, when we reflect on the origin of such tension in our lives, we each could line up at least one 'face' dressed up as an agent of stress.

These 'faces' usually - but not always - bear the visages of bosses or supervisors, hasslers that work one to a point of nervous collapse, whip crackers who, in turn, have masters above them wielding more sophisticated whips.

I happened, in one career incarnation, to be cast in the mould of a teacher. Most of those times were totally joyous. But it was here also, in the final years, that - like some ill-fated miner - I happened upon some of the richest veins of anxiety and other sundry ores such as frustration and anger, along with some astonishingly real but fake diamonds called 'education'.

None of these stressful elements emanated from the classroom, mind you. Although this might sound odd, the classroom and my literature pupils provided the most therapeutic relief from what went on around this vague attempt to teach, to discover jointly the art of writing with plot and structure and how to peel back and peer beneath the veneer of a writer's words to a deeper, more insightful meaning.

Too often my attempts were simply thwarted, 10 minutes into a class period, by a peremptory knock on the door. In would stroll an office boy - not really a boy but a full grown man - whose features always bore a look that said he'd arrived just in the nick of time to save me from a fate worse than death - which is teaching literature to 16-18 year olds.

When you've spent 10 precious minutes out of 40 gaining the focus of every one of your 30 pupils, this violent intrusion by 'the rapper' was very nearly intolerable, for me. Having successfully wrecked the concentration levels in the room he would then deliver his message: "The principal wants to see you."

A variation on this would be 'headmaster' or 'supervisor'. They all, somehow, contrived to see me during teaching hours. I'd leave a class prefect in charge and march furiously across the square, keen to hang on to the anger seething within, only to be met by the ever-smiling principal's secretary - a person that could smile through famines and earthquakes. "Sit," she would say courteously, "he will see you presently."

Endless minutes would drag by, the bell would ring ending the untaught literature period, another 20 minutes of a free period would whizz by before the intercom on the secretary's table would buzz and a voice say, "Send him in."

Him. As impersonal as that! Not Kevin, or Kevin Martin, or Mr Martin. But 'him' who would dare teach literature when there are other things in store.

Usually it would be some irrelevant matter. "I'd like you to write up a report on such and such." Or, "I'd like you to train the elocution pupils." Or, "The principal's report needs drafting and a sharp eye. Yours."

My eye, I would think silently, but the joke, if said aloud, would escape him. And so it went, with endless repetition - the rapper, the trapper and the helpless teacher, a tragi-comic triangle.

Fill out these forms. Not in triplicate. But three separate times. No carbon copies. No white ink to cover up a slip. Unending statistics in countless columns on blue-lined forms, dates of birth, community, nationality, mark lists. Glorified clerkship. This, I realised, with mild surprise one day, was the larger picture.

The smaller one - secreted somewhere within that large picture - was to do with finishing syllabus. I miss terribly the thrill of the classroom but I've never regretted walking away because my concept of teaching was suddenly at variance with the system in place. The anxiety of not being able to complete The Old Man and the Sea would have killed me and you, dear reader, would never had heard this tale.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney.