A Quadrant reader and teacher of four decades, one whose mantelpiece is crusted with awards, shares why she has turned her back on the blackboard once and for all. It's not that she no longer wishes to teach. Rather, it's the bureaucracy, the fads and theoreticians' abstract conceptions of how classroom business should be conducted that have broken her will to go on. If you've wondered why Australian schools slip ever further down the OECD rankings, here are a few clues