WHO would be a teacher? Stuck in overcrowded classrooms filling in endless forms. Berated by parents, abused by truculent students who will accuse you of sexual harassment if you hold them back for detention or “misgender” them. Then there’s the stress of making sense of the Curriculum for Excellence, and soon some teachers will have to become Named Persons and be held responsible for every case of child abuse in their catchment area. No wonder there’s a chronic teacher shortage and schools closing early through lack of qualified staff.

Actually, teaching is not nearly as bad as some would have you believe. It can be a dignified and rewarding career shaping the minds of the next generation. It’s not that badly paid either. A registered teacher is guaranteed more than £35,000 a year after five years, according the the TeachScotland website, rising to more than £86,000 for head teachers. They also have a generous defined salary pension, index-linked, that would cost a fortune to buy in the private sector. It doesn’t compare with bankers, consultants and the like, but who really wants to be a banker, or spend endless years pursuing elite qualifications?

There are precious few jobs in the private sector that are as secure as teaching. You have a job for life (even if you’re not very good), a 35-hour week and 12 weeks’ holiday a year on full pay. But it’s not the pension or the job security, but the fact that you have a career which is genuinely worthwhile. In our hollowed-out world there are few occupations where you can look in the mirror and say that what you do genuinely benefits society. It beats dull office work, selling stuff or boosting the profits of some dodgy private company. Automation isn’t an issue, because robots cannot teach.

So why are teachers seemingly always off with stress and in a permanent state of industrial dispute? Well, of course it is the job of the teachers’ unions to look after the pay and conditions of its members. Teachers and public sector workers generally have been falling behind thanks to austerity cuts. Conditions have deteriorated in schools – though this is mainly a problem south of the Border, where state schools have been under siege from governments which seem to believe that only introducing market competition will improve education standards. This is not the case in Scotland.

The difficulties teachers face are very real, but the danger of relentlessly projecting a negative image of the profession is that it destroys morale and diminishes public respect. Over the years I’ve met many teachers who are enthusiastic, enjoy their work and certainly don’t feel like exploited factory workers. They get a great deal of personal satisfaction in helping young people discover themselves. Teachers are generally intellectually active, keep abreast of current affairs, and have sufficient time off to be constructive members of civil society. Where would the conservation movement be without teachers – or charities, or the peace movement? Teachers often take the environment seriously because they know that the young people they teach will inherit the earth. Others are involved in the women’s movement and see teaching as a rare opportunity to promote equality and diversity.

But I sometimes despair at the people who speak for the teaching profession because of their relentless miserablism. They don’t seem to appreciate how this damages the image of the profession and contributes to the teacher shortage. My son wouldn’t dream of going into teaching, despite being surprised at how relatively good the conditions are. To him and his contemporaries, teaching is not only a dead end, but akin to a life-threatening disease. This is of course ridiculous, but nearly every story they read is about the record number of teachers who are off with stress, how high the suicide rate is, how violent classrooms have become.

The media report these stories, which mainly come from the teaching unions, because editors know that anxious parents will read stories about classroom doom. The sheer volume of this inverse propaganda eventually undermines state education. Too many parents in Scotland, who believe in public education, scrimp and save to send their children to private schools because they’re convinced that the local comprehensive is likely to damage their children’s life chances. This is desperately sad. Private schools only deliver impressive results because they select their intake and have better PR.

But it is hardly surprising that parents feel this way when all they hear about is industrial conflict, stressed-out teachers and collapsing school buildings. Yet, most Scottish schools are now up-to-date and well run by staff who are genuinely committed to delivering high standards. Yes, some literacy numbers are not as good as they should be, and Scottish schools are not scoring as highly on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) league tables as they used to. But tests and league tables aren’t the whole story, and schools in Scotland are certainly as good as in England. The problems with attainment have more to do with the social circumstances of young children than with the quality of teachers.

I have the greatest respect for the teaching unions which do a great deal more than complain about pay. They are committed to the highest standards of eduction and take their role seriously. And I realise that ultimate responsibility for the standards in schools rests with the Government. But teachers as a profession need to have just a little more self-respect and try to be more positive about what they achieve. It is not an admission of weakness to say that teaching can be a great career. The Government isn’t going to slash their pay just because some teachers admit to a bit of job satisfaction.

In fact, the more the public respect a profession the more likely it is to be highly paid. That’s one reason why GPs and dentists seem to do so well. If the public is given the impression that teachers are little more than security guards, devoting more time to crowd control than education, then they’ll expect them be paid accordingly.

The profession needs to to back to school and learn the basics of public relations.