The passion and the pain

No, I’m not going to write about teaching again. A third column would try your patience and one should never try a reader’s patience. So even though there is much still to say, I shall not say it. Instead, I shall fulfil the duty of every warm-blooded citizen and lament the state of All Black rugby.

(It’s a pity though. Because in response to the story of Mr Robinson and the assault by earphone I have been sent an abundance of stories from the educational front line. Typical was an email from an ex-teacher who had been at a gathering of former colleagues, some retired, some still at it. And every one of them agreed that they could easily, at one time or another, have been Mr Robinson.)

But enough. The All Blacks are more important. And one has to have sympathy for the coach. He thought he was out of the woods, and now he’s plunged back into them. He’ll be feeling sick to the stomach and wondering whether anyone has his back and whether the job is worth the grief that comes with it. (Which, oddly enough, are exactly the sentiments expressed by several relief teachers. Had I been writing about teaching again I would have quoted the relief teacher who compared the classroom to a minefield. At any moment, she said, she might step on the sort of mine Mr Robinson stepped on, and in such an event she wasn’t sure that the principal or the school trustees would support her. Another described relief teaching as ‘‘life on thin ice’’. Neither thin ice nor a minefield is a metaphor suggestive of a joyous place of learning.)

The All Blacks, as we all know, have just lost again. They are unaccustomed to losses. (The teaching profession, however, is plagued with them. In the column I’ve decided not to write, I would have mentioned a correspondent who had a long and successful teaching career. She rose from classroom teacher, to principal, to troubleshooter dispatched to schools in difficulty. And all along she fought the good fight against what she calls political correctness. But now, in her sixties, she’s conceded that fight. With great regret, but for the sake of her blood pressure, she has retired from education. Now that’s a loss. As is the intermediate teacher who loved teaching but who threw in the towel after 25 years because he knew he was heading for a nervous breakdown. He had suffered at the hands of parents who backed their miscreant children and a principal who backed those parents.)

Anyhow, while lamenting the All Blacks, we should also take care to praise the Argentinians. They were driven by passion. They did exactly what All

Blacks traditionally do. Their forwards manhandled ours. (And that verb prompts another story from the column that doesn’t exist. A teacher on playground duty intervened to stop a kid from committing an act of grievous self-harm. A few nightmare months later that teacher was standing in front of the Human Rights Commission, charged with manhandling a child.)

All Black supporters feel they have a right to expect victories. (And rights were at the heart of the woes I’m not writing about. Correspondent after correspondent told me that the rights of the troublesome child now trumped the rights of everyone else. But all is not despair. Good teachers will continue to do good things. As one retired principal put it, ‘‘I still went along each day loving what we could do for the kids. It was just all the other crap that wore everyone down.’’ To which the only possible response is . . .)

Go the All Blacks.