Second, teachers understandably suspect Ms Morris of playing an old trick: think of a way of saving money and dress it up as a brilliant way to raise standards. Politicians did this with open-plan schools (cheaper, because they saved on space and bricks); now they are doing it with learning assistants (cheaper, because they save on salaries).

Third, teachers’ unions have opposed every innovation since, well, at least since 1972, when I started writing about education, and probably since chalk and slate were replaced by paper and pencil, causing a Victorian version of Nigel de Gruchy to complain that paper would clutter up the classroom.

I think Morris is right. But I’d rather skip all that hot air about “high-quality, individualised learning” in her TES piece last week. I would prefer, to coin a phrase, to go back to basics. Why are doctors so well-paid and highly respected while teachers are badly paid and widely denigrated? Why do middle-class children aspire to a medical career but not teaching?

The simple answer is that doctors can plausibly present themselves as a professional elite. Not only is the number of doctors between a third and a half of the numbers of teachers, but doctors have people to boss around: nurses.

Imagine the school of the future. Children sit at computer screens. Learning assistants direct them to the correct website, send ill-disciplined children out of the room, note pupil errors in computer-generated tests, wipe bottoms where bottoms need wiping.

Twice a day, morning and afternoon, a senior teacher appears in the traditional academic gown, accompanied by a retinue of fawning junior colleagues. Heshe identifies learning difficulties, makes notes in illegible handwriting, capriciously amends lesson plans, issues orders (in a plummy, superior voice) to the assistants. Heshe also addresses the class (or group) for a short period, cajoling, inspiring, leading them into new and exciting areas of learning. The children hang on every word, because a proper professional has rarity value.

Nice work if you can get it, eh? Yet teachers reject it. They remain insecure about their own expertise. They worry that they do not own a body of specialist knowledge. They believe that children will turn into savages and, to coin another phrase, pig-ignorant peasants without their constant supervision. So they carry on photocopying homework, pinning displays on walls, putting straws in milk, cleaning out guinea-pig cages, setting out chairs for assembly (the most common task performed by deputy heads, one glorious piece of research found) and so on. And they expect me, as a taxpayer, to fork out up to pound;30,000 a year for these jobs.

When he was prime minister, Harold Wilson took great pride in cleaning his own shoes. Somebody wrote to the Guardian complaining he had not been elected for his shoe-polishing skills.

I take a similar view of teachers. I can just about place chairs in a straight line but cannot, for the life of me, plan a lesson, or fathom why a 13-year-old can’t spell. For those skills, I would pay pound;60,000 a year. That’s what teachers deserve; but they won’t get it until they behave like real professionals, instructing lower orders to clean up after them.

Peter Wilby is editor of the New Statesman