Five years ago, I wrote that teaching is probably better off not being framed as a calling. Not because the work is unimportant. Quite the opposite. Because the idea of a calling so often blurs boundaries. If you “really care”, you stay silent. You do not complain. If you burn out, others read it as a lack of passion. In the process, systems quietly offload structural problems onto individuals.

What struck me at the time was not pushback, but recognition. People did not argue so much as nod along, as if the thought had been sitting there already, waiting to be said out loud.

Since then, that discomfort has only grown more visible. And not just in education. It shows up wherever work is closely tied to identity and meaning, such as in healthcare. Academia makes this especially clear. It was there, in fact, that I recently came across an article that felt almost like an echo of that earlier post.

It is an opinion piece by Laurel Raffington, published in Nature Human Behaviour. The title is deliberately sharp: Academia is just a job. No calling. No life mission. Just work.

For some, that phrasing may feel like heresy. But Raffington immediately makes clear that this is not an argument against passion or commitment. She explicitly states that she loves science. The point is not that the work lacks meaning, but that meaning is too often misused to conceal structural problems.

What the article lays bare is how “love for the job” functions in academia as a moral lever. Precarious contracts, extreme workloads and constant performance pressure become normalised. Those who cannot keep up are subtly led to believe that the problem lies with them. Not with the system. As if leaving or burning out reveals a lack of calling rather than a boundary crossed.

That mechanism feels painfully familiar. In education, too. We repeat that people make the difference. We praise drive and commitment. And we say teachers do it “for the pupils”. At the same time, we design systems in which time is scarce, support is fragile, and expectations stretch without limit. When people draw boundaries, they are often asked to explain themselves first, as if restraint needs justification.

What is interesting in Raffington’s argument is that she explicitly distances herself from the idea that less talk of calling would lead to lower quality. Quite the opposite. By naming work as work, it becomes possible to organise it sustainably. To normalise boundaries. To place responsibility where it belongs: with institutions, policy and organisation, not solely with individual commitment.

That was also the core of my argument back in 2021. Education does not need martyrs, but professionals. People who know their craft, take their pupils seriously and find their work meaningful. But that does not require canonisation. It requires professionalism. Boundaries. Support.

Perhaps that also explains why that post met with so little resistance at the time. Not because the message was comfortable, but because it touched something many people had already been feeling. That meaningful work should not serve as a licence for structural overload.

Five years on, that message does not sound more radical, but more widely shared. It now surfaces in science, in healthcare, in education. Less as an accusation. More as a sober observation. And perhaps that is exactly what this kind of work needs. Less romance. More care. For the work, and for the people who do it.