Thunder 1

I hate to say it. Indeed, since four of my siblings are teachers, I'm almost afraid to say it. But the secondary teachers are not winning the PR battle.

What's gone wrong is best exemplified by what happened lastTuesday. The dated protest outside Leinster House could have happened 20 or even 30 years ago: anoraked masses clutching placards, singing The Fields of Athenry and shouting We Shall Overcome. While it undoubtedly made the teachers feel better, that's group therapy, not public relations.

The ASTI need to realise that several years ago Greenpeace redefined public protest as street theatre, providing entertainment for the potentially irritated bystander and delivering vivid pictures conveying the essence of the story to TV and newspapers. The Dail protest may have heartened the troops, but seeing it summed up next day by a picture of capped heads surrounding a misspelt placard must have been commensurately disheartening.

Therein lurks the nub of the PR problem. From the beginning, the campaign has failed to reach, inspire or convince the general public. To update Socrates' observation that "the unexamined life is not worth living": the unexamined claim is not worth making.

The early days of the campaign were studded with claims which were self-evidently true from the teachers' point of view, but which failed to generate warm nationwide acquiescence. Claiming teachers created the Celtic Tiger is a PR bummer. If all of the claimed progenitors of the Celtic Tiger were laid end to end, they'd carpet Ireland shore to shore. And - as one sharp-tongued contributor to a radio phone-in asked - "If ye created the Celtic Tiger, what the hell took ye so long?" The implication being that teachers hadn't been so quick to take credit for years of recession.

Key propositions of the teachers' campaign don't seem to have been reality-tested in advance. Some teachers sound as if they have no concept of just how ambivalent the public view of the profession is as opposed to, for example, their view of nurses.

Thunder 2

PR Planning needed to start from that reality. Instead, on one radio programme, a teacher seemed astonished when pointedly told she worked a scant 22 hours a week. Not true, she said. Look at all the preparation I have to do. Nonsense, came the retort. You have to prepare lessons once. The following year, the curriculum is the same, so the notes you prepared last year will serve all over again. She seemed flummoxed by this fairly predictable response.

The appeal of their case has been over-estimated, and the need to persuade the general public underestimated. Print media has been under-utilised. Although many teachers write wonderfully, few persuasive features have come from the profession on to the opinion pages. Persuasive images of teachers experiencing genuine financial hardship are hard to dredge out of the coverage of the last few weeks. Instead, they are likely to recall images of off-putting envy: teachers talking about recent students now earning more than their former teachers. More sinister, from the teachers' point of view, is the hardening sense amongst the public that while the profession claims to be seminal in our children's lives, it is showing little concern for the young people who this year face their Leaving Cert.

The greatest danger for the ASTI at this point is a psychological process called perservation, which happens when people become embattled in a chronic crisis. It is characterised by repetition of actions or utterances long after their usefulness has passed - indeed, when those actions or utterances may serve to worsen the situation. If the teachers are to come out of this situation with dignity, perseveration must be prevented, and a radically new approach found.

Thunder 3

Late on Tuesday afternoon, I met a group of teachers heading for a train after the protest and asked them how effective it had been.

"Twelve thousand turned up," I was told. "That's a big voice."

Thunderous, I agreed. But, in mad counterpoint, the words of a recent country hit ran through my mind.

"Thunder's just a noise, boys. Lightning does the work."

Tom Savage is a director of Carr Communications, the training and PR consultancy, and author of How to Get What you Want, a guide to negotiation skills.