“Weed Out The Dunces”: Representations of Teachers in the British Press
Author: Emily Clark, PhD student, Institute of Education, Warwick University[1]
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Glamorgan, 14-17 September 2005
1. Background
Since the 1980s there has been an upsurge in media interest on education in Britain and the US and theorists have warned of the possibly destructive impact on teachers’ public status and esteem (Cunningham 1992; Baker 1994). However, to date there are only a handful of short studies on media coverage of education news events involving teachers and little collaboration between the fields of education and cultural studies (Morgan 2002).
Educational research that explores the image of teachers has tended to draw on their personal and school-level experiences. In some discussions on the status and professionalism of teachers, public image is incidental, or used without qualification or substantial evidence (Lortie 1977; Hoyle 1980; Simon 1991). A few studies which have considered representations of teachers in the media and popular culture have focussed more on the process of news and culture than on the subject matter and the consequences in the field of education (MacMillan 2002; Lumley 1998).
This presentation covers very preliminary findings from a study of teachers in the British press in the 1990s. The focus on the production of imagery rather than its reception and impact, in the aftermath of the 1988 Education Reform Act, revisits and queries some commonly held assumptions about the public image of teachers, the way changes in education policy affected them and the context of their working environment. This presentation uses a couple of examples from the data to demonstrate how representations of teachers may be identified in newspapers and understood in the context of educational literature.
2. The sample and approach
The sample included the Times, Independent, Guardian, Mail, Mirror and Sun and this presentation will take into account data taken from 900 newspapers, 90 from each year of the decade. The sample was selected on the basis of circulation figures from the Guardian Media Guide and the amount of coverage they give to teachers, assessed by an online news archive called Lexis (http://web.lexis-nexis.com).
The sample covered all six newspapers for one week in February, May and October in each year. All stories featuring classroom teachers of students under 18 were read and annotated. Information was also collected for head teachers and kept separately as a point for comparison.
The method of data collection was loosely based on grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss and Corbin 1998), which involved approaching the newspapers with, as far as possible, an open mind and no pre-determined categories. The approach required that themes and keywords emerged from the texts and were coded and organised into categories through a constant process of comparison, referral and revision. Data was introduced to a computer programme called Nvivo, which provided a neat, easy and systematic way of analysing, coding, grouping and revisiting the texts. After more than a year of data selecting and coding, three are more than 4,000 codes and underlying themes which will be subjected to more rigorous testing and analysis. There is not room here to discuss the methodological issues raised by this approach but the process will become clearer as examples and the findings are discussed.
3. Findings
Short overviews of a handful of newspaper articles are provided here to give an impression of the materials under investigation and the process of data selection and analysis.
In 1998 the Government launched a £1.5 million advertising campaign using celebrities to recruit more teachers. The Guardian ran a feature beginning:
In an attempt to lure more people into the teaching profession, the Government has launched a TV commercial […] While the prospect of getting credit from famous alumni may appeal to the next generation of teachers, this is not the only instinct which drives people into the profession. Why do they really do it?
(Guardian, Who Are We? 19.05.98, page 6)
The paper proceeded with a list of characterisations and cartoons to describe the aspiring teacher as a missionary, an exhibitionist, a fascist, a bureaucrat, a scholar, a hearty sportsman or a cynic unsuited to any other line of work. It concluded that teachers were essentially “displaced” members of society:
It isn’t true that those who can do and those who can’t teach. It is just that those who can teach can’t be bothered to do anything else.
This feature illustrates three initial points about the representation of teachers in the press more generally.
Firstly, and most obviously, teachers were here the subject of satire. As Novoa (2000) explained, satire and cartoon sometimes exaggerate very real issues. This article played on the insecurities of readers by emphasising their worst fears: non-committed, uninspired, selfish, self-motivated and unskilled teachers. The result was to create stereotypes based on crude assumptions and generalisations rather than insight to individuals working within the context of the school and national policy. Secondly, the vocabulary used here demonstrated a conflict between the Government’s “drive” to “lure” people into teaching, and how new recruits might be motivated by personal ideologies or “instincts”, such as religion, politics and philosophy. Thirdly the article showed the complexity of the teacher image. The teacher was coded here as, among other things: state employee, apparatus of the state, social construct, cultural object, independent agent, careerist, and an ideologist who engineers lessons in accordance with their personal beliefs.
These three observations may be explored further when applied to a second article from the Mirror:
Teachers are to be given exam-style grades just like their pupils – to weed out the dunces. New instructions to school inspectors urge them to “mark” staff from one to seven for classroom performance
(Mirror, Teachers To Get Marks, 17.10.95, page 11)
This news article showed the same inclination as the first to generalise, having assumed some kind of an ideal teacher with measurable, standardised performance. However, the word “dunces” also portrayed teachers as individually accountable and potentially dangerous. The word “weed” added a further dimension, implying a living, instinctive, natural and destructive force acting outside of approved remits. Fundamental to this and the majority of the articles considered in this study was a very obvious tension between the teacher as an independently functioning person with influence over parents and pupils and the teacher as disempowered, employee of the state and servant of the public, parents and pupils. In other articles on the National Curriculum teachers were often shown to be a doorway or a barrier to knowledge. When they existed as guardians and gatekeepers of knowledge they were immensely powerful. The newspapers were fascinated in teachers who broke conventions and rules – for instance the emphasis on sexual abuse cases in schools, or the number of crime stories where teachers and even children of teachers were unnecessarily identified as such. The stories of private misadventure had the effect of highlighting teachers’ positions of power and potential disaster.
French Miss, 45, To Marry Schoolboy
TEACHER Jean Mangan ran from jail yesterday into the arms of the ex-pupil she seduced at 14, then said: “We’re getting married.”
(Sun, 15.05.95, page 1)
There were early indications that the tension between the disempowered and empowered teacher mounted as the decade progressed but it was too early to say much at this stage in the analysis.
The complexity of the codes was apparent again in the Mirror article as the teacher emerged as pupil, apparatus, dependent, devalued employee, non-expert, consumer item, dangerous influence, weed, public servant, inferior graduate, school functionary and many more.
4. Discussion
At this stage in the analysis the imagery of teachers was as much about ambiguity, neglect and uncertainty, as clarity and presence. Nonetheless, the numerous representations may be compared with the some of the dominant images identified in an extensive review of the literature. These characterise the teacher as: 1) State Apparatus; 2) Stereotype; 3) Practitioner; 4) Schoolmarm; and 5) Ideologist.
Teacher as State Apparatus
There has been a great deal of literature which identifies the subjugation of teachers by the state and their manipulation by the National Curriculum and Government policy (Apple 1996; Althusser 1971; Goodson and Hargreaves 1996). In the newspapers this hierarchy was more complicated and less static.
Teachers were variously controlled by Government and the market. But equally significant was their role as servants and consumer items for the public, parents and heads (even sometimes pupils). On another level, they existed as agents acting in their own interests to greater and lesser effect. The perspective, foci, demands and priorities shifted between newspapers and each differently configured the meaning of teacher professionalism. So too the remits of their perceived influence and power fluctuated.
Teacher as a Stereotype
The power of the media to manipulate the truth has been persuasively used by education theorists to describe teachers’ social status. (Simon 1991; Lawn 1987). The inclination to stereotype was strong in the newspapers. Assumptions about common ideal, non-ideal, cultural or social types that existed in the public consciousness underlay many stories and these assumed/ ‘commons sense’ identifications took precedence over definitions used by politicians, the Government or any other source. However, there was no single image of teachers. They could be simultaneously dangerous, admired, needed and needy. Cunningham’s study (1992), also found that the image of teachers in the press was a “composite” one, made up of extreme, contradictory and competing themes. This suggests that terms like public opinion, popular belief, crisis and status require clarification before they are used as serious tender in educational debate.
Teacher as Practitioner
Recent educational studies have used a sociological perspective to try and define teachers (Goodson and Hargreaves 1996; Goodson and Sikes 2001; Clandinin 1986; Grumet 1988; Miller 1996; Nias 1989). In some respects these researchers gave more credit than newspapers to teachers’ local powers and the complexity of their occupation. The newspapers more often highlighted product than process and made simplistic assumptions about the cause and effect of the National Curriculum on pupil achievement. Interpretative, self-motivated practice was cast negatively because it was at odds with the assumed national/public perspective.
Potentially this study may provide a useful perspective on teacher identity that recognises the conflicts between their local activity and public profile which practitioner-based studies risk neglecting.
Teacher as Schoolmarm
Many of these educational studies recalled with more or less sympathy the characterisation of teaching as a caring and religious vocation, requiring the predominantly female instinct to love and nurture with various degrees of control (Grumet 1988; Miller 1996). Though there was a gender dimension to some of the emerging metaphors in the newspapers, it was not a central or consistent theme around which others were organised. Gender was most commonly referenced in relation to sex and crime, though towards the end of the decade concerns were mounting about the feminisation of teaching and teachers’ position as influential ideologists and gatekeepers of knowledge. Descriptions of sexually active women teachers as titillating and sexually active men teachers as dangerous perverts were possibly without exception. In more than 1,800 articles there were probably not more than four pictures of ethnic minority teachers and few more of men – though there were several male head teachers. The absence of material on race, age and religion in coverage of teachers makes comment at this stage of analysis difficult.
Teacher as Ideologist
Teachers have also been described in research as public intellectuals and symbols representing society, democracy and ideology (Giroux 1996; Morgan 2002). The identification in this study of the teacher as producer, state apparatus, influence, consumer item and gatekeeper coheres with these theories. They were assumed to be morally upstanding and often featured as character referees in biographies on high profile people or as memories in writers’ recollections of childhood. They also recognised teacher stereotypes, using Mr Chips, the cane and the mortar board as symbols of authority in coverage of Parliament and sports as well as education.
The fabricated ideal teacher varied according to the context, cohering with theories that the media is contested territory in a power struggle between the Government, advertising clients and readers (Gerbner; Fairclough 1995). Representations were configured to validate or undermine teachers and policy makers, but not parents. The newspapers were speaking with assumed authority on behalf of their readership.
5. Conclusion and further research
Most researchers have used educational events or themes to focus their investigations of teacher identity or news coverage (Cunningham 1992; Macmillan 2002; Wallace 1993; Lumley 1998). The context and time specific measurements are valuable to educational and cultural theory but this broader study explores the implications of these specific findings by providing a larger context.
This paper has produced tentative findings in the very early stages of the project. However, there were early indications that representations of teachers in the newspapers shared similar and contradictory themes with literature on teachers. As yet there was no single or binding idea of teacher in the press. The themes did not appear to constitute a single, even if fragmented, image. In fact the word image would be misplaced in this context. Teachers existed as much or more through neglect, ambiguity and relationship to something else than through description and definition. Sometimes they appeared as empowered individuals and at other times, perhaps even on the same page, as subjugated and devalued pawns in a political regime. Their representation was premised upon the assumption that the readership shared a common understanding of different types. Despite the lack of consistency, there were clear and continuous themes which hinted at what these types were. The themes were best described conceptually as existing on continuums relating to power, influence, authority and agency. These were key concepts in the educational literature too, though the design and focus of these was often very much more specific. The newspaper data provides a new perspective which contextualises the disparate and often conflicting messages given in research.
It was beyond the remit of this study to measure how and why the newspapers represented teachers in particular ways or how these images were received by consumers. However, this investigation highlights the contribution further cultural studies on this topic may make to education theory and vice versa. They could move towards a better understanding of: 1) how teachers and other consumers respond to the different images presented in popular culture; 2) how teachers’ choice of newspaper might impact on morale; and 3) the problems of recruitment and retention in teaching. If, as Gerbner believed, the teacher is symbolic of social relations, then the teacher image is a fertile site for the further investigation of dominant ideologies, as well as an important focus for education theorists wanting to help teachers develop individual and critical insights to understand their position in society.