Sir, Your editorial of April 12th is yet another spiel on educational matters which is abuzz with business management theory. It is also a paradigm of confused thinking.
Using the standards of business and industry, you state "Customer satisfaction is becoming a central principal of all public services and parents and children are the customers of the education system." This is simpleminded stuff, not to say fallacious. In the education "business", the parents are not only the customers but also the suppliers and there are few suppliers prepared to readily admit that what they have supplied is anything less than perfect. The conflict of interest should be obvious when the function of customer and supplier overlap.
If the standards of business and industry are to prevail, as you and other commentators seem to think they should, will schools be allowed to write off losses or dump unreliable suppliers? Will the worker/teachers in the educational factory be allowed to retool their assembly lines so that any damaged nuts and bolts may be replaced by shiny new parts which have the potential to be classified as "A" in the Leaving Certificate points system? If the `child' customer at a second level educational factory is abusive, sullen, recalcitrant, lazy and frequently suffers from a hangover because of a demanding social life, should the worker/ teacher be blamed when the product at Junior or Leaving Certificate level is less than impressive?
Whenever educational matters are to the fore, we teachers can be assured of being at the receiving end of a philippic from whichever of your staff writes the editorial. Clearly, this person could do it all 50 much better than the average teacher, who is perceived by you as someone who needs to have the PCW package clarified for him or her.
Of course, I also suffer from my own folie de grandeur, frequently telling myself how much better I could write the editorials in The Irish Times by ridding them of the odour of sanctimoniousness which clings to them, and by informing myself of the repercussions of Thatcherite policies in British schools before advocating them for this country. Yours, etc., MA, H.Dip.Ed. Boreenmanna Road, Cork.