I wanted what was best for the underprivileged. So I decided to teach only in the inner city. Not much has changed, except that I no longer read Marxist magazines and I have stopped dabbling with the Socialist Workers Party. Why? Because my experiences in teaching have taught me that it is not lack of money or prejudice that keep my children poor, although clearly money is useful and prejudice is to be found everywhere. But over time, I came to realise how mistaken I had been in my understanding of the education system.

I remember once taking a white teacher colleague to Diane Abbott's Black Child conference. It was Saturday morning and so dedicated was he, even after 20 superb years in the classroom, that he followed me there, always willing to learn from new experiences. As the speakers expounded on the inner racism in the teaching profession, on the fear white teachers have of their black pupils, I will never forget the sense of shame that consumed me. Why? Because not only were the speakers speaking utter nonsense, but I knew how much this teacher had done for black boys over the years, and here was I, dragging him out of his bed on a Saturday morning so that he could be called a racist, just for being white and for being a teacher. 

For years, I soldiered on in the classroom, working hard to change the minds of children who were paralysed by a sense of victimhood. They found it impossible to believe that I had chosen to be their teacher, that I wanted to be there, that I loved being around them. Eventually, like any good teacher, I won them over by using all the tricks of the trade, from gold stars to phone calls at home with positive comments, to holding breakfast clubs in the early morning when I would spend my own money on croissants. My students felt grateful. Like me, other teachers give their life to the job, and we "succeed" despite of the shackles of the system. 

The regular dumbing-down of our examination system is obvious to any teacher who is paying attention and who has been in the game for some time. The refusal to allow children to fail at anything is endemic in a school culture that always looks after self-esteem and misses the crucial point, which is that children's self-esteem depends on achieving real success. If we never encourage them to challenge themselves by risking failure, self-esteem will never come.

I started to climb the professional teaching ladder, rising to positions of middle and senior management. There too I succeeded but often only by fighting against people's innate liberalism. Indeed, I would sometimes find myself arguing with my own deeply-embedded liberalism: "Take pity on the boy. Don't punish him. It isn't his fault he didn't do his homework; just look at his home situation." Or "Why ask them to do their ties to the top or tuck their shirts in? What does any of that have to do with learning?" 

I had become indoctrinated by all the trendy nonsense dictating that if children are not behaving in your classroom, it is because you have been standing in front of them for more than five minutes trying to teach them. If only you had sat them in groups with you as facilitator, rather than teacher at the front, then you'd have the safe environment conducive to learning that we all seek. The basic ideology is that if there is chaos in the classroom, it is the teacher's fault. Children are not responsible for themselves, while senior management fails to establish systems that support teachers and punish children for not doing their homework, whatever their home situation.