Whether a glass is half full or half empty actually depends on whether you’ve just drunk from it or not.

I’ve kept up with the educational press for many years now and recent doom and gloom exemplified by attacks on new funding arrangements and grammar schools seem, even to me, to signal an extraordinarily bleak period.

So speaking at a researchED event in Oxford recently came as something of a shock, and a joy.

I’m no fledging, or anxious NQT. When a speaker talks about their 10 years “experience” I have to stifle a smile, so events like researchED give me a chance to bring quite a lot of perspective to play.

Rarely have I witnessed such a display of high quality, informed professionalism. The entire event cheered me no end. There was no sign whatsoever of the political whining so common at educational conferences, the type of narcissistic bleating even Radio 4 comedians are beginning to realise is decimating their audience.

If the handful of speakers I saw and the dozens of delegates who spoke to me are anything to judge by, there is ample evidence that the profession is not only in good shape, it is indeed far more competent, skilled and professional than I have known it at any time in my career. There are indeed many children out there being taught by terrific, not “outstanding”, teachers.

But before politicians or their fluffy hand puppets line themselves up to claim credit or bang their own dumb drum, I want to dwell, for a while at least, on something else the event confirmed for me, quite dramatically as it turns out.

Taking offence

I’ve understood for a long time that the single biggest threat to the profession wasn’t coming from politicians: it was coming from technology, specifically technology businesses. I’ve written about it extensively.

Like lots of experienced teachers, I’m acutely sensitive to the responses from the faces in front of me. I can see instantly when I’m upsetting someone (and there is always at least one) and I can see exactly who in the audience is on my side. I can play to the most approving, just as I can try to win back the hostile.

Although over the years I’ve come to accept once they’ve taken offence, the latter is a really tough call.

Offence taking by adults is a particularly intransigent kind of behaviour, like a child in the playground sticking its fingers in its ears. There was a moment in this particular presentation at researchED that came close to epiphanic.

I was explaining how data tyranny in education had its source in commerce, how technology businesses especially, place huge faith in data. It is after all their bread and butter. They are culturally incapable of taking any action that isn’t informed by figures on a spreadsheet. It’s embedded in their DNA. They make computers and software: what else should we expect? 

It was when I moved from there to point the finger at some of the technology giants, and argue that’s why these global brands don’t exactly have a great track record when it comes to ethics, because moral debate is outside their skills set, that the epiphany, or at least a flash of insight, hit me across the head with a fence post.

I could see a number of faces were genuinely surprised by that assertion.

Clearly a good number of professional, well-educated adults in that room were really unaware that global tech companies are in the sole business of generating profit for their shareholders, and some of their employees.

In spite of all the bad press, the marketing, PR and advertising efforts of these giants had paid off and people were still prepared to believe they were in some weird way, acting for socially benign reasons.

Many people will be aware that Google has a mission to do no evil. If you look up their official mission statement, you’ll find it is purely and simply, to organize all of the data in the world and make it accessible for everyone in a useful way.  Their unofficial motto is to avoid being evil…that is all according to Google of course.

Grandiose visions

Take a look at the visions that afflict the senior team of other tech giants and you’ll find they are similarly grandiose, similarly unreal. These are words only nerds would dream up. 

The epiphany came because I too suddenly had a vision of me walking onto a stage to receive my degree from a heavily bearded old chap almost 40 years before.

On that occasion, the speaker knew he was addressing a hall full of arts graduates. He gave an intelligent, engaging and apparently, since it had somehow clawed its way gasping to the surface even after four decades, memorable address.

He had told all of us in the room that there was value and reason behind our years of studying arts subjects. That whatever we ended up doing, whatever direction our careers and lives took, our education had placed a significant, almost sacred responsibility on our shoulders.

Science and technology are what changes the world, he said, it’s down to you to make sure they change things for the better.

He is unsurprisingly long dead now, but his words will stay around for far longer than any tech business’s mission statement, however global their current grasp.

Not because they suddenly re-emerged after almost 40 years while an educational consultant was speaking at a researchED event, but because they sit between the covers of The Lord of the Flies, Rites of Passage and The Spire, and because he was the Nobel prize-winning author, William Golding. 

Joe Nutt is an educational consultant and author

To read more columns by Joe, view his back catalogue

Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow Tes on Twitter and like Tes on Facebook