Defending a reputation is not an easy task. Just ask Eamon Dunphy, a man for whom I've a growing sympathy. For, however hard it is to change someone's mind about an issue, to change their opinion of a person is infinitely more difficult, writes Joe Humphreys.
Perhaps it's because one's view of one's fellow man, or woman, goes to the heart of one's identity - more so than one's view of the Nice Treaty, the Earth Summit, or some such matter of public policy.
Those who working to counter racism will testify to this; it's easier to convince someone that racism is bad than to stop them from hating blacks or Travellers.
Dunphy can tell of a similar lesson: It's easier to persuade people that the FAI is a shambles than to change their opinion of Roy Keane. And, so I have learnt too, because like Dunphy I find myself on the side of a much-maligned character, against whom it appears great forces are ranged.
Of whom do I speak? The teacher - or more precisely the secondary school, ASTI-card holding, supposedly overpaid, underworked and endlessly whinging teacher. Is there any less popular cause, one wonders? Listening to RTE radio recently, one would surely think not. I'm thinking particularly of Pat Kenny's return from his summer holidays, and his revealing choice of interviewee for his comeback radio show.
"Anti-intellectual culture"
The broadcaster had tracked down a correspondent to The Irish Times whose letter had been published on these pages five days earlier. The woman, a Ms Collette Ware, who worked as a school supervisor for a number of months this year because of the ASTI dispute, partly blamed the union "for the emergence of a yob/anti-intellectual culture" (something of which not even Roy Keane has been accused of, as far as I know). Teachers organised their work around their coffee breaks, she said, refused to acknowledge students as persons, and whined constantly about changes in the curriculum. Oh, and their classrooms were kept "as drab and dreary as possible".
"One could go on," she said, and she did.
Now, I'm all for Irish Times letter writers being fêted by Pat Kenny, but they don't all get such an easy time. Ms Ware got ten minutes on air, and Pat Kenny lapped up her opinions with unquestioning relish. Was I the only one to feel he sounded as if he had the scoop of the year?
A more surprising, and perhaps sinister, broadcast was heard earlier in the summer, in which a teacher was ridiculed on the Brenda Power programme for entering a competition for a free holiday run by the same show. How dare such a slacker, already the beneficiary of long holidays, etc., seek a free break at RTÉ's, and thus the taxpayers', expense? That was the general tenor of the contributions, which Ms Power freely broadcast with her own affirming commentary.
Worse was the presenter's dismissive reaction to legitimate complaints about the item, the thrust of her response being that teachers should stop whinging and grow up.
Battle against self-interest
Does any of it matter, one might ask? Does it matter what we think of teachers any more than it matters what we think of Roy Keane? My suspicion is it does, not because teachers have a right to be loved but because they need to be supported in a continual battle against self-interest in the education system. And nowhere is this self-interest more apparent than in parents' constant demands for more class work, more homework, shorter holidays and a longer school day for their children.
A lie that needs nailing in this regard is that Irish secondary school pupils spend less time being taught than their European colleagues. School holidays in Ireland are marginally longer than in most EU countries. But to raise this point without also noting that the school day in Ireland is the longest in Europe (according to OECD statistics) amounts to disinformation.
The truth is Irish students receive more, not less, teaching than the European average - 74 hours more annually on average, according to an OECD survey last year of 13 EU member-states.
I'm not denying the right of parents to have a voice in education. But what they seek is not always in the best interests of their children, let alone that of their school, or the education system as a whole.
Recalling my own experiences as a secondary school pupil, I felt parents (mine excluded, of course) had a predominantly negative effect on education: on the one hand, by hyping up exams and fuelling the Points Race frenzy, and, on the other, by undermining the authority of teachers and their principals in a way no child could do.
The latter they did, in particular, by refusing to accept the necessary disciplining of their children; by sending those same kids to unnecessary external grinds, thus giving them free reign to continue misbehaving in school; and by bullying the school authorities into trying to sack good, if not excellent, teachers against whom they held a personal grudge.
Long-term view
It was clear to me at the time, and it's clearer now, that teachers, for all their vested interest, are the only players in the education system likely to take a global or long-term view of what's best for students. Without them, and without their strong voice, policy and debate will inevitably concentrate on the short-term needs of the economy, or the interests of those who can shout loudest. It's already not hard to imagine the school day being lengthened simply to let parents beat the traffic.
For this, if for no other reason, the reputation of teachers is important. Anyone who tries to denigrate it unfairly cannot have the best interests of the education system, or pupils, at heart.
JOE HUMPHREYS