It's a bit like smoking, in a way. It seems so glamorous from a distance, and then you get up close and struggle to draw breath. Sometimes you might even feel sick. It's the dream of every school-going child that his or her teachers will go on strike. Extra holidays. No homework. Freedom. And now we've had a teachers' strike. Like the cigarettes, it has left a bad taste in our mouths. But worse is yet to come. The line has been drawn and the curse cast: exams may not go ahead, but even if they do, they will have been tainted and cheapened. Classes will be disrupted for the foreseeable future.
And why is all this happening? There are a few reasons. For a start, the Government has handled this dispute appallingly, with scant regard for the welfare of its students. At the same time, it must be said, the collective heart of the Government was in the right place all along - protecting the PPF and the economic future of the country.
The leadership of the ASTI has also handled the dispute badly, and that's about as kindly as it can be put. Not only did they forbid their members from holding classes for Leaving and Junior Cert students, they also warned them off holding extra, after-school classes for their students. Public. Opinion. Two short words that go a long way. It's a pity the ASTI's executive council hasn't realised that.
The main reason, though, is that the teachers themselves, on the news, on Prime Time, on radio phone-ins, on every possible soapbox, have argued their case badly. They would have us believe that this dispute is about teachers being rewarded for increased productivity. It's just as well that this dispute is, just like any other pay claim, about the money, because the productivity claim wouldn't hold up to an assault from a wet paper bag.
It is ridiculous to claim that productivity has increased, as it obviously hasn't. Students aren't any more intelligent or better educated than they were 10 years ago - compare maths/English/Irish papers from last year with maths/English/Irish papers from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Nor, and this is the crucial point, are they any more successful.
All that has changed is that this success is more visible; during the black days of the 1980s, graduates were forced to emigrate, whereas in latter-day Ireland, they stay at home, able to enter highly-paid jobs. And it's probably not unfair to say that there was a lower level of emigration among teaching graduates than any other qualified group. To claim that their low pay levels mitigate against teachers in an economy where an overturned skip near a landfill site could easily fetch £100,000 on the property market is equally preposterous.
Do they seriously believe that they are the only ones struggling to make ends meet? Are they the only ones who can't afford to buy houses? Is high inflation hitting them any harder than it is hitting everybody else? When 40 per cent of them are reported to be earning in excess of £30,000 per year - nearly twice the average industrial wage - the answer is "no" in all cases.
The claim that they have only the nation's best interests at heart is utterly disingenuous. "Economic considerations" is the phrase which you will hear parroted in the media and on radio phone-in programmes. This is more than a little rich coming from the ASTI. They, after all, are the ones jeopardising the PPF. Indeed, they tried to mortally wound it.
The rest of us would agree that economic partnership has suited this country very nicely indeed over the last number of years, contributing in no small part to our present economic prosperity. For teachers to threaten this process, one much admired by the rest of the EU, while beating the drum of "economic considerations", is sickeningly ironic.
Bernadine O' Sullivan, speaking on Today FM's The Last Word a while back, drew a comparison between the amount of money being earned by teachers and that being taken home every week by the Garda. Our dedicated teachers, she informed us, are earning 86 per cent of the weekly pay packets of the Garda. So, why the 30 per cent pay claim? Were the maths teachers absent when that vote was taken? Or, was any vote taken at all? More and more, 30 per cent seems like a vague figure, plucked out of the air in the manner that litigious American class action lawyers pick a random figure for their clients' lawsuits.
The countries with the best education systems in the world reward their teachers handsomely. The Americans and the English don't pay as well: their systems are in crisis. There is little doubt that teachers deserve extra money - the Government is welcoming, arms open, the TUI and INTO to the benchmarking table. The job is a hard one and though it has rewards, they are paltry. It's just a pity that the ASTI and some of its members have taken the public for fools.
Public. Opinion. Two short words. They could have gone a long way for the ASTI.
