Reflexões sobre a profissão docente: passado, presente e futuro

Past

In the 1970s, my mother used to say that although poorly paid, teachers still held social status. They were seen as moral and intellectual references.

When I began my teaching career in the second half of the 1980s, that image was already in decline. Salaries remained low, but respect had diminished, and the profession was beginning to be associated with precariousness. Saying you were a teacher often drew looks of pity and sometimes even disdain.

In the 1990s, while studying for my degree in Languages (Portuguese–English) at UFRJ, I noticed disillusionment settling in among my own classmates—future teachers. Many dreamed of passing a public service exam “because it was less work” than teaching in the basic education system.

The problems and challenges had grown: in addition to low wages and little social recognition, teachers wrestled with precarious school structures, long working hours, and a lack of pedagogical resources, among other issues.

It was then that I understood that to stay in the profession, vocation was not enough. Resilience was necessary. I realised then that Brazilian teaching was entering a new era: the era of survival.

Present

This brings us to a question: how has that past helped shape the present?

Teaching today requires more than pedagogical preparation—it requires stamina. The 21st-century classroom carries all the familiar demands and many others that emerged without warning: technology, bureaucracy, learning gaps, emotional and social issues that spill into the teacher’s daily routine.

Teaching, always a profession of multiple roles, has expanded even further: the teacher is mediator, mentor, counsellor, conflict manager, and digital content producer. The time needed to plan, reflect, and engage in professional development is lost amid forms, reports, and platforms.

Devaluation remains a central theme, but it has taken new forms. Symbolic recognition has diminished, and material recognition rarely matches the complexity of the work. Recent studies show that most teachers feel overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted (Instituto Península, “Professores e a pandemia”, 2022–2023; Todos pela Educação, “Relatório Profissão Docente”, 2023). Teacher burnout is no longer the exception—it has become routine.

A FAPESP report, “Teaching profession at risk” (October 2023), states that in addition to inadequate salaries and overcrowded classrooms, enormous post-pandemic learning gaps are contributing to teacher attrition. A study by Instituto Semesp (Perfil e Desafios dos Professores da Educação Básica no Brasil, March 2024) indicates that 79.4% of surveyed teachers have already thought about leaving the profession. Among the main reasons cited: lack of recognition/encouragement (74.8%), lack of student discipline/interest (62.8%), lack of societal support and recognition (61.3%), and lack of family involvement (59%).

Amid such scarcity, is there still anyone who believes that education is a place where it’s possible to transform lives? This balance between exhaustion and purpose may be the most accurate portrait of Brazilian teaching today.

Future

Teaching in basic education carries a long-standing contradiction: it is one of the most essential professions and, at the same time, one of the least valued. Understanding how this scenario took shape—and why it has worsened in recent years—is key to imagining the future of those who teach and learn in Brazil.

Talking about the future of teachers is, in part, talking about the future of the school itself. If we want that future to be promising, we must rebuild the foundations of the profession, not simply patch them up.

It seems essential to place teachers back at the centre of educational policy in a real and effective way, granting them a genuine voice and real autonomy. Valuing teachers cannot be limited to rhetoric: it must translate into career paths, time, decent conditions to plan and learn, and socioemotional support.

It will also be necessary to rethink teacher education, bringing it closer to contemporary practices and local realities. Technology can be an ally as long as it is accompanied by support, training, and pedagogical purpose—not as an imposition or in the form of perverse apocalyptic predictions: if you don’t master AI, you’ll lose your job; a robot will replace you; learning becomes data, the teacher becomes noise.

But the future of teaching does not depend only on policy. It also depends on a new social pact in which families, school leaders, and society at large recognise the value of the act of teaching.

Recovering the symbolic respect my mother saw in the 1970s may seem utopian, but it is precisely that utopia that keeps alive the hope of those who insist on teaching every day. And beyond utopia, restoring the teaching profession is ultimately about ensuring the possibility of a sustainable, effective, humanised education—and, consequently, a concrete future for the next generations of Brazilians.