Dear Editor,
Having examined the main points of the proposed package by the Minister for Education, I am dismayed by the fact that it serves only to strengthen the already frightening division between teachers and their clients. The victims thousands of second level students, or have teachers forgotten that these are actually the adolescents who they are supposed to be assisting in building a future for themselves?
Amid all the euphoria teachers have lost sight of the reason why they are teachers. Many of them claim that they can no longer cope with "problem pupils". Surely it should be one of the main tasks of teachers to resolve classroom disputes.
By demanding wage increases and reluctantly agreeing to put in only IS extra hours a year in non teaching activities (the Minister's original proposal was 40), teachers are sending a clear message to parents and pupils - that they would rather be anywhere else than in the classroom. The teachers' attempts to upgrade their professional status is reflected in their demands and students will reach the conclusion (if they haven't already), that they are merely a final obstacle to the complete liberation of teachers.
It is not an unknown fact, that many parents also feel inferior to those in the teaching profession. There is evidence to show that this problem varies according to socio economic class. The only occasions on which parents have the opportunity of meeting teachers are when parent teacher meetings take place, and unfortunately not all teachers deem these to be of any great significance.
Parents' councils may pave the way for a certain amount of parental influence in education, but such councils consist mainly of middle class parents, thus once again excluding those from lower socio economic backgrounds.
The present demands by the unions will therefore facilitate not only the financial but also the social distance between teachers and parents.
I believe that the situation has reached crisis point. As the Department of Education, parents and thousands of pupils across the country are being held to ransom by the teachers unions, there are indications that even these proposals will be rejected. As we cast our minds back to the last academic year we can recall that teachers, by their strike action, added fuel to the fires of many Junior and Leaving Certificate student as well as their parents who feared that the unrest would escalate in the vital weeks leading up to the exams.
No claims of being "stressed out" can convince me that these are the actions of genuinely concerned teachers.
(Name and address with
Editor)
