Buckley, it sounds to me like you have some kind of deep seated grudge against teachers for some reason. That is perhaps the only explanation for some of the, frankly, uneducated nonsense I have read on this thread - mainly from you - as the majority tend to agree that teachers are hard-working, valuable members to our society. You claim you work hard yourself, yet have enough time to even reply to your own posts on this thread as you continue to 'bump' the thread up. Why? What is your real motivation? One wonders.
My mother is a teacher and a part-time job it most certainly is not. But I'm confident you know that really anyway. I'm sorry to tell you, but knowing a few teachers - or "lots" as you so accurately put it - in your football club in north London does not mean you know how hard teachers generally work. Some of your sweeping statements make me wonder whether you have completed a nationwide YouGov poll into the matter, but alas I think you are just merely jumping to wild conclusions having spoken to an extremely small cross-section of the profession. By the same token, saying "all other professionals" work an x-number of extra hours a week to try and somehow justify your argument is as stupid as it is unquantifiable. You simply do not know that.
My mother, and other teacher friends I know, are regularly in work for 7.30am and rarely get home before 4.40pm/5pm - vast majority of the time without having had a lunch. That is nine and a half hours (give or take) every day of the working week - and before the nightly marking and lesson planning even begins. That is at least another hour or two most evenings - even more when it gets to reports time. Add to that, a good four to five hours lesson planning on weekends. If a 50+ hours-a-week job is 'part-time', then I'd love to know your definition of a full-time job.
Then we have, as others have correctly said, lots of planning, preparation and training during the summer holidays which means a six week 'holiday' it is not. The same goes for half-terms, too. I know teachers, from when I was at school, who were physically reduced to tears by students in front of a whole classroom because of the abuse they had to put up with. From my mum's experience alone, she has had expensive reading glasses snatched by students, verbal abuse from both pupils and parents alike on a regular basis, and even translators drafted in for parents evenings just to be able to communicate with parents. Someone else also mentioned that being a teacher is a secure industry - again, not always true. The teaching profession is full, in this day and age, of short-term teaching contracts and thus, short-term job stability.
To make out being a teacher is a part-time job, that they have it easy, and that the vast majority are just brainwashed into thinking they work hard is just plainly wrong on every level. It is a statement which shows either complete ignorance or from the mouth of someone with a grudge to bear.
I say all this as a professional of another seriously overworked and vastly underpaid industry in the private sector. I work similar hours to the true working hours of a teacher but get paid even less. I have every reason to begrudge them their higher salary and what appears (from the outside) to be good holiday dates. But having seen firsthand the stress and actual sheer hard-work it requires, I have nothing but respect for teachers in general. Of course, there will be exceptions, but the same could be said for "all other professionals", eh Buckley...