Read the text and do the assignments that follow

“You must be mad!” was the general comment of family, friends and colleagues. “Giving up a teaching post now, when there isn't much chance of finding another one, ever!”

“And what about all that lovely money you're earning, and all those long holidays!”

But I had already come to my lonely decision, after months of concealed suffering. I knew I could no longer continue in the teaching profession. To wake in the morning with a fear of the day ahead, to force a hasty breakfast down an unwilling throat, and then set off for work with a pounding heart and a frozen face had become habitual, and I had turned to tranquillizers to help me along.

It had not always been as bad as this. Ten years ago I managed well enough, and the holidays for rest and recuperation used to come round just in time.

But I, in common with most other teachers, am enormously self-critical, and I knew now that I was no longer ‘managing.’ My classes were noisy, the children were not learning very much, my attempts to cope with changing teaching methods were patchy, I had run out of enjoyment and enthusiasm. It was time to stop.

But was it all my own failure? In fairness to myself, I don't think it was. I had plenty of ideas, I loved my subject, and, by and large, I liked children.

I had been idealistic. But the reality I faced was bored children, over-stimulated by video-watching the night before and tired out by a late bedtime. They were children who were given the wrong food at the wrong time, who came breakfastless to school and then stuffed themselves with gum, crisps and sweets bought on the way; who were ‘high’ with hunger in the lesson before lunchtime and giggled restlessly as the smell of chips from the school kitchen came wafting to all floors.

There were children who absorbed all the smutty side of sex before they were 10, and were constantly teasing and titillating each other; bright, hard-working little girls who changed, under the pressures of peer group and advertising, into assertive, screeching empty-heads, with make-up in their pencil cases and a magazine concealed on their desks.

Then there were the ones from difficult homes, such as Simon, whose parents had split up after many years together and who was not wanted by either - his tired eyes flickered all round when I tried to remonstrate with him privately, and his pale face never stopped twitching. But he could bring chaos to my lessons with his sniggerings and mutterings.

The rudeness I had to put up with, and the bad language, appalled me. I had no redress, as the only form of punishment available was a detention, which meant keeping myself in too.

Sometimes parents could be contacted, and their help sought, but frequently they were as bewildered and incapacitated as we ourselves.

A frequent image came before me, as I lay in bed after an early wakening - the maths room after a ‘wet break’: chairs turned over, books and orange peel on the floor.

Year 10 are due for their English lesson, so I come in and attempt to assert myself and restore order. Jeremy is telling jokes. Donna is cackling. Andrew is standing on a desk and yelling out of the window.

At one time my very presence in the doorway would be enough to ensure a partial silence. Now they give a vague “Hello, Miss” and carry on.

I distribute the work sheets, expensively photocopied, and we try to start, but two slow girls are making noises: “Miss, I can't understand this!” And James is quietly reading his football magazine, Jeremy continues to tell jokes, more quietly now, and Michele bares her gum-filled teeth and urges Paul to shut his face.

I have been trying to create the basic conditions in which teaching becomes possible, but I have failed, and no longer have the stomach for the job. And that is why I'm giving up.