Sir, The editorial in your paper (March 30th) in speaking of the rejection by second level teachers of the recent "deal", attributes the strength of the "no" vote to teachers' failure to understand the issues involved. Union leaders at second level, it is claimed, "did not do enough to clarify the deal and get the salient points across to their members".
This is part of the mythology, created also by some union officials, which has been developing. The suggestion that a facilitator be appointed and the calls for "clarification" arise from this mythology. Those who understood the issues, we are told, voted "yes". Those who did not understand voted "no". What an extraordinary oversight on the part of the great philosophers that they did not realise that the capacity for human understanding can be measured so easily! How foolish of Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche and Foucault to spend their lives examining the nature of cognition when the whole thing is really but a matter of counting "yes" votes. But if the premise were correct could not the reverse conclusion be equally valid! Those who understood voted "no".
The reality is that this "deal" was the most understood issue in the history of trade unionism. Within the TUI for example, not only did all members receive a copy of the proposals and the arguments of the union leadership for a "yes" vote, they also received a copy of a contrary position from the Dublin City Post Primary Branch which incidentally the leadership of the union sought to suppress. Branches all over the country met to consider the issue. In addition a band of strolling players from the union head office toured the country with their one act play, seeking by agitprop and histrionics to achieve what argument was clearly failing to achieve.
Another myth is that teachers are reluctant to work additional time after they have completed their actual teaching. Teachers are no petty people. It has always been accepted as part of a teacher's responsibility to meet parents, develop curricula, monitor student progress as well as the myriad of other tasks which extend a teacher's work far beyond the classroom and teaching time.
There are many reasons why teachers might reject the "deal" but lack of understanding or refusal to accept the responsibility of the job are not amongst them. It is ironic that what is described an "early retirement deal" does not contain any proposals for early retirement on full pension. Rather, what is presented is a mixture of inadequate welfare measures and disciplinary suggestions for workers injured by the difficult demands of the job of teaching. Anybody who expects that teachers would write to their employers, enclosing supporting evidence, claiming that they are incompetent, and would then wait to be prioritised on a list of other incompetents does not understand teachers. Teachers constitute a dignified profession.
As for the £67 million. It does not contain a general pay rise. Many teachers would get nothing. The rises in pay for promoted teachers are presented as a major advance in salary. For an unknown range of future duties the increases vary from £6.71 a week to £15.20 a week, before deductions. And the increase would not be paid in full until September 1998! The apocryphal stories of teachers' duties told by your correspondent in his article (March 30th) bear no relation to the responsibilities carried by "post holders" today.
The unfair juxtaposition of the proposals for nurses and teachers is a divisive ploy. While nurses deserve the best deal that they can get, the invidious comparison does not take into account that there are nearly twice as many teachers as nurses, and there are more than 4,000 schools, a number which scarcely equates with the number of hospitals.
So perhaps you might leave mythology to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Yours, etc., Sutton Park, Dublin 13.