I really enjoy election season - the excitement, the stories, the debates and the whole theatre of politics. Then there are the election specials and the blow-by-blow analysis of which seats are going to which parties as the votes come in. The discussions with friends and colleagues as we dissect the results and speculate the impact it will have on us. Then the quality of comedy increases as we have a surge of post-election satire. The thing I enjoy the most is my vote; whether the party I vote for is successful or not it’s a chance to choose a party that best fits my ideals and values.

I was watching a TV show with a medical aspect the other night; in it the doctor wanted to treat a patient whom the other characters didn’t like because he was a terrorist or something. The doctor said he had to treat the patient because he had vowed to ‘Do No Harm’, and not treating a patient goes against the Hippocratic Oath. My mind wandered during the TV show, as it often does when I’m at home in the evening, and I started to think about why teachers don’t have an equivalent. What if we had something similar, that we vowed to uphold even against conventional morality? What might it look like and how would it work in practice? What if we had The Pedagogic Oath?

Many of us will immediately reply: “No! Morals aren’t our concern. Schools have no business telling children what is right or wrong.”