This paper is drawn from a recent microhistory of teacher stress, a genealogical inquiry that reveals the debilitating effects of a 'game of truth' called 'economic rationalism' on South Australian teachers during the last two decades of the twentieth century. It explores the everyday stresses of teaching through extracts from the teachers' oral history narratives, contemporary articles from the mass media and relevant policy statements from the period. Informed by the theories of Foucault, Weber, and the Annales, it juxtaposes particular historical discourses about 'stress' with 'regimes of knowledge' that were circulating in the world of education.