Ecco perché ho smesso di insegnare a scuola

Summary

The speaker explains why he left his job teaching mathematics and physics at an Italian scientific high school after five years. He emphasizes that this is a personal account, not a statistical assessment of all schools or teachers. He was able to leave because he had gradually built an online career in science communication and teaching while still working at school. Without that alternative, he might have stayed.

Why he left

1. His expectations of school were idealized. As a student, he saw school as a protected, intellectually stimulating place shaped by teachers’ passion for their subjects. He hoped teaching would let him remain in that environment as an adult.

2. The everyday staff culture differed from what he imagined. He enjoyed teaching in the classroom, but expected more frequent conversations with colleagues about science, teaching ideas, and intellectual questions. In his experience, those conversations were relatively uncommon; workplace and personal issues, conflict, and complaints took up more of the day-to-day interaction.

3. He encountered a pervasive culture of complaint and resignation. He recalls frequent complaints about students, their preparation and attitudes, and the state of education, as well as a sense of counting down to the end of the school year. He acknowledges that many concerns were real, but felt that discussions rarely led to proposed solutions. He says this atmosphere could drain the enthusiasm of optimistic teachers.

4. He felt pressured to lower academic expectations. Over time, he found it increasingly difficult to maintain the standards he considered appropriate, including expectations for students’ effort, independence, and results. He says the issue was not simply that students had become less prepared; in his view, teachers were increasingly pushed to ask less of them.

5. The system seemed to avoid failure. He describes a climate in which insufficient grades or student failure could trigger disputes with students, families, school leaders, and colleagues, along with extensive documentation. He argues that treating every negative result as a system failure undermines assessment. Learning can involve mistakes and setbacks, he says, and avoiding them at all costs can be unfair to students who work consistently and meet the expected standards.

6. Curricula and established routines limited the teaching he wanted to do. He felt that some mathematics and physics topics received more time than their educational value warranted, based on his teaching philosophy. He would have preferred more interdisciplinary connections, applications, and practical laboratory work. Although teachers have formal teaching freedom, he found that established routines, coordination needs, and departmental expectations made it difficult to change course. He observed that new teachers may arrive wanting to transform things, but can eventually fall into existing patterns.

7. Bureaucracy took time away from teaching. He encountered extensive forms, reports, and other administrative requirements, and felt much of the work was disproportionate to its educational benefit. In his experience, administration could take more time than lessons and seemed to generate further administrative work.

8. School increasingly adopted a corporate style. He noticed more business-oriented terminology and procedures, such as objectives, indicators, competencies, reporting, and projects. He felt that formal processes sometimes gained more importance than educational content, without a clear explanation of how they improved learning.

His overall perspective

The speaker emphasizes that he did not regret teaching and always enjoyed being in the classroom. He also recognizes the positive sides of school: it helps shape the future, offers meaningful contact with younger generations, and includes talented students and passionate colleagues. He cautions that social media is not a reliable picture of young people as a whole.

His conclusion is that school and teaching did not match the picture he had imagined, and that he personally was not suited to that environment at that point in his life. He offers his experience as a way for prospective teachers to adjust their expectations, while acknowledging that other people may experience school differently.

Speakers and sources featured

• The video’s presenter: The Random Physics channel host, speaking from his personal experience as a former high-school mathematics and physics teacher.
• Other people mentioned, but not heard speaking: Colleagues, students, families, school leaders, and teachers the presenter has spoken with.