On the Uselessness of English Teachers

The profession par excellence of the vulgar middle class

The English Teacher is the profession par excellence of the vulgar middle class, producing, as it does, nothing of lasting value, and existing only to propagate its own existence.

Those who decide to study English in higher education (usually because they are incapable of studying any more demanding subject) inevitably go on to teach it.

The decision to move into the profession presumably occurs when the English graduate realises that few other avenues of employment are open to a person with only a certificate in speaking his own, native language.

The English Teacher is paid just enough to satisfy his basic pleasures. He has a little money for wine and cheese, and his status as an “educator” allows him to perpetuate the delusion that he is undertaking intellectual work. Importantly, he is afforded neither the time nor the money to pursue anything greater than that, nor to do any great damage to the world.

This arrangement is anything but accidental. The emergence of an educated middle class in the 18th century inevitably resulted in an educated female middle class who desired to use their own education in some industrious way. The role of English Teacher was thus created in order to keep these women busy, while ensuring that their role would be so inconsequential that they would be unable to use it to exercise any significant economic or political power. All English teachers today, whether male or female, are the progeny of deliberately subjugated, credulous women.

It is difficult to overstate the supreme uselessness of the English Teacher’s profession. One recent trend, which quickly had to disappear, was "independent reading time". This was invented by teachers in order to fill class-time and to cut down on their lesson planning. It also turned out that simply allowing children to read on their own was the most beneficial part of their education. But to acknowledge this would have been to recognise the purposelessness of the teacher, and the practice was scrapped.

Desperately clinging on to relevance, and having little else to do, English Teachers have been some of the most active voices in the “culture war”. This useless flailing comes from both sides of the political aisle but, broadly speaking, English Teachers can be divided into those that say the “N word” out loud while reading Of Mice and Men, and those that sterilise children. The lurch towards a more and more degraded education is fuelled by both.

The solution, not only to the crisis in education and literacy, but to the annoying catfight of the culture war, is to abolish the role of the English Teacher. There are currently 1.3 million vacancies in low-level labour jobs in the United Kingdom, all of which require some proficiency in the English language. Add Religious Education, Physical Education and Drama to the grinder, and we might have a functioning country by the next general election. 

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