Before I begin, I was able to experience what it is like to be a teacher in the year 2007 and from my own experience, it was hard work. The hours are long, especially during marking periods, and there are a lot of 'assumed' on the spot expectations - although I did enjoy teaching, watching people learn from the knowledge I was able to pass on.

Unfortunately, teachers have guidelines they 'must' follow and the assignments, tutorials, and exams must match these guidelines or at least be equivalent to the guideline. I'm sure other states in Australia and even other countries will have the same opinion about the guidelines - they are never up to date, and they are based on topics which really don't matter in the real world. To make it simple, it's like W3C to the Web Industry; they are never up to date and they focus on some of the least important things.

I really would have loved to teach the students some really cool things however I knew that if I distract them or taught them too much, then their main assessments would either a) never get completed or b) lack any enthusiasm. So to my student's disadvantage, I taught them what the guidelines told me to teach them.

For some teachers, their lacking in knowledge of the real world is a big issue. I understand quite well why a lot of them are missing any real world knowledge quite easily: do a 12 hour day of marking, conversing with students, organising assignments, following up on missed calls, helping students and more and then try put in some time to learn something for yourself. It isn’t going to happen.

I do believe teachers need time to educate themselves through personal projects and social networking with other teachers in the same field. Exactly how universities and colleges designate a day to professors to work on their personal projects, this would benefit teachers at TAFE and schools if they could have the same privileges.

Somewhat related article
A clear example of lacking of real world knowledge is shown in this post about a teacher whom confiscated a student's Linux CDs, thinking it was piracy. And that article gets better.