Not so loveless after all

As a Budapest high school teacher, I read Jaime Winchester’s “A loveless profession” (The Budapest Sun, December 11-17) with interest. My own experience of teaching has been so different from that described of Miklós Tóth’s that I hope the Sun’s readers don’t get the impression that his is necessarily typical.


I’ve been teaching English at an average public high school (gimnázium) in the working class part of northern Pest for over 19 years. It is not an exceptional school, neither particularly good nor bad. But unlike Tóth, who became disenchanted with the foreign language teaching profession in a public high school, my experience has been essentially positive, and it has been far from loveless.
Quite a few of my students have gone on to study English at university and become English teachers themselves. Many of those who didn’t study English further do use it in their everyday work lives.
Teaching is a tough profession, to be sure. The money is downright pathetic, given that we have the important role of bringing up and educating the nation’s next generations. It’s easy to feel that the situation is always getting worse and that the students are more apathetic than they were years ago.
But the teaching profession has its rewards, and the most important, I think, is love. I am still in touch with, and friends with, former students. For example, just this past weekend four of my students, now 30 years old, came over for the evening to have a pre-Christmas get-together. They come over to celebrate my birthday every year. As does another class which graduated about 3 years ago.
So, for all its faults, the Hungarian public school system is still essentially a good one. And even if students seem less motivated today than in the past, it is up to the teacher to find the right path for the students, and not give up. My colleagues are generally good teachers and we support each other’s work. If you teach with love and devotion, you will get that back in kind from your students. I do.

Kevin Shopland,
Budapest

Kevin Shopland

17.12.2008