We are living through times of Biblical intensity: fires, floods, locusts, plagues. Each is visited on benighted populations, who are bewildered by a growing sense that this cycle of catastrophe is the new normal. 

How we long for humdrum times of banal conversations, of being able to shake hands without fear of receiving an invisible black spot, of getting a cold without fearing a feverish heat. It won’t be long before Twitter will start to get nostalgic for the purely existential threat of Brexit. 

And what about schools? If ever we are reminded of how central they are to the running of the country, it is now. 

Every discussion between anchor and expert about Covid-19 reaches an inevitable denouement that begins with a question concerning the likelihood of schools closing their gates.

And, for a moment, listeners pause, chilled by the implications of what that really means. 

The final barriers

Schools are talked of as the final barriers, the last rampart of a sandcastle which, when it crumbles, will allow - oxymoronically - a tide of paralysis to sweep through the economy.

Teachers, it turns out, will be manning barricades made up of unsold crates of Corona beer, empty hand-sanitiser bottles and discarded face masks, long after Westminster has closed down. 

“One day more”, MPs will say to headteachers. “We’re right behind you,” they will shout, as their 4x4s disappear into the shrinking green zones. Les misérables deviennent les malades.

National crises have a way of revealing buried truths, and discarding flabby, extraneous shows of sentiment. That smile of admiration, sans lips, sans everything, can become a rictus grin, immobile and unflinching when the script moves from comedy to tragedy. 

Teachers or supervisors? 

Those of us in education believe that schools are important for a number of reasons. Let us count the ways: education (which counts as three if your arithmetic is as poor as Tony Blair’s), helping children grow into balanced and happy adults, being places of hope and ambition. 

All these things and more make schools central in the collective experience of a nation. Or so we like to believe. We characterise ourselves as professionals equal - in merit and in our sense of moral purpose - to doctors and nurses. 

We see ourselves as indispensable: alchemists capable of changing lives, forming personality out of the crucible of youth. But what if it’s only the buildings that matter to those who pay the overheads? 

Do those who move troops and police across outsized maps in subterranean rooms keep teachers and health workers fixed in their schools and hospitals? Are we the lubricants that keep the mechanics of the nation moving, sponges who absorb the damaging breath of others? 

If we stop, or break down, everything else does too. So that can’t be allowed to happen. Because, when push literally comes to shove in a national stampede for the final roll of toilet paper, what is our real value to those in power? What is our primary purpose in times like these: to teach or to supervise?

Quiet acts of daily bravery

Anyone who has been involved in schools for any length of time would probably accept that we have moved away from times of poetry into a time of prose.

Foolscap is a less valued currency than an Excel spreadsheet now, and that Blakean ecchoing green - of schools being places of such, such joys, and of play and friendship - has been replaced at policy level by a repurposing that makes even a Wikipediast’s definition look lyrical in comparison. 

The playground is marked out by bottom lines, and each of those web-like threads is connected to hundreds of businesses, and thousands of parents, who have to be childfree for much of their working, waking days. And when those threads snap, everything collapses. 

Teaching is in an almost unique position of power. But it is also, fortunately, innately compromised by our commitment to the young people we unquestionably care for.

At times like these, this pivotal position - and the often selfless desire to help others - exposes teachers to a threat that many other professionals would not risk themselves. 

When this crisis has passed, we should recall the daily, quiet acts of bravery. And we should remind ourselves of our profound value in not only educating students, but also in keeping the country working.

David James is deputy head (academic) of an independent school in the South of England. He tweets @drdavidajames