Which advert would persuade you to teach? I can't remember if there was a moment when I sat in the cinema, saw a finely crafted piece of propaganda, and without raising my eyes to the roof, thought, "Yes, that's it! Who would have thought that getting in to see 'Jurassic Park 8' early would have opened my eyes to a career I had never before contemplated!".
The latest advert (you can see the details at the Teacher Training Agency's website here ) features lots of headless people and the soundtrack of the seven dwarves singing "Hi-ho hi-ho, it's off to work we go". The headless people are muffled, presumably because you need a head to speak, and so the sounds of ringing phones and factory machinery dominate. Okay, so headless woman may be addressing a group of boring old executives, but being the optimist that you now know me to be, I can only see the good things in this scenario. For example, headless woman gets to wear a skirt to work if she chooses, because she doesn't have to climb on tables to fix the window blinds that never shut properly. Headless woman also has a flipchart! - with colour pens! No scratchy old blackboard for her! But the biggest bonus is that Miss Fancy-Skirt-and-Flipchart also has a captive audience. I bet there's no shouting out or heckling from those old boys. Unless they are MPs, of course, but they seem pretty well behaved in the advert.
After a montage of nightmare scenarios that could be your job if you don't immediately
sign up to be a teacher, like taking the heads off dolls on a factory disassembly line (and
I'm sure I had a job just like that to try and make ends meet whilst at college), we are
suddenly shown normality. Well, screen normality anyway. The jolly laughter of merry children
enjoying their science lesson as a young, yet balding, man rubs his pate and laughs along
that the experiment wouldn't work for him.
Now, I don't know about you, but I'm not sure what type of message this is giving out. After all, us over-educated types have been taught to analyse everything, and it's a habit that sometimes inhibits the enjoyment of books and films. But I do think there's something inherently wrong with this current advert - is it saying that the only way Mr Prematurely Bald gets female attention is by teaching giggling schoolgirls? Or that it's okay to take the piss out of your teacher and their appearance because they are so easy-going? There are many readings of any text, including the script of this advert. But it's easy to pull carefully crafted adverts to pieces. So let's do it again.
It's time to move on from the Mr Chipsesque "Everyone remembers a good teacher" type of ad.
I still reckon that bad teachers are the ones that stick in my mind.
I remember doing my own version of the "Those that can, teach" recruitment adverts. It went
something like: "Can you give up every evening to mark piles of half-arsed pieces of homework?
Can you take abuse from children and their parents on a daily basis? Can you relearn on a
continual basis, every time the government throws some new initiative at you? Can you manage
to work with poor resources?" And so on. It's quite simple to do, and I'm sure any teacher
will have their own "Can you" lists.
I'm sure some of you are even thinking, "Well, Ranting Teacher, can you find anything positive about it all? Can you stop moaning long enough to do a half decent job? Can you stop all this negativity rubbing off on those poor children you teach?" Well, of course the answer to this is that in the classroom I'm chirpy and encouraging, sympathetic and efficient, and it's only when all my energy is sapped at the end of the day that I start to grumble.
Anyway, I'd like to suggest my own ideas for the next teacher recruitment adverts. I mean, why should those poor overpaid headless corporate whores at the advertising agencies stress themselves about these matters when they should be out there polishing their BMWs? So, in the spirit of appealing to the generation who have grown up with extreme sports like snowboarding, and everything else extreme, from computer console games to cheesy strings, I present: "Extreme teaching".
The scene opens on a blanket of snow, and our view of the scene is somewhat obscured by flurries of snow. Then we begin to focus, and see our hero teacher bundled up in trendy jacket and stripey hat and gloves. Teacher is directing the poor shivering children onto their buses as they smile gratefully at her. Cue a graphic of a stamp leaving its impression on the scene, reading "Extreme bus duties".
Scene two would show manic children running down corridors, leaving slopping wet puddles behind them as they go, until they run into the smiling face of their teacher, who has a jolly laugh with them whilst directing them into a classroom where children are calmly playing and there isn't a paper aeroplane or crisp wrapper in site. The graphic of the stamp again leaves an impression on the scene, which this time reads: "Extreme wet break".
A couple more similar scenes would then lead up to the clincher, which would probably be a scene of our intrepid teachers on a ski slope in Andorra with their laughing charges, and not an underage cigarette in sight, as the voiceover says something like, "Extreme teaching - are you up for it?"
Yes, it's still a sanitised version of the job. But who would carry on teaching if it was all so dire? Hmmmm....
added 25/1/04
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