Teachers should learn from sacrifice of others
THE ASTI’s accusation that Education Minister Joe McHugh issued guidelines for predicted grades to force teachers ‘to put up and shut up’, made me smile. For I doubt that even the junior infants class at the minister’s local school – sent home more than two months ago – is naive enough to expect teachers to give an inch workwise without a humdinger of a row.
Covid-19 has arguably brought out the best in us, but the same can hardly be said for teachers. Our low-paid checkout staff, shelf-fillers, burger flippers and baristas have been exemplary, despite the health risks involved in dealing with the public during these torrid times.
Granted, hospital consultants didn’t exactly cover themselves with glory when it came to the temporary transfer of private hospitals to the State but, otherwise, the massed ranks of health workers have been inspirational.
The rate of corona infection in their sector is frightening but it never diluted their dedication to their profession or the common good. Most of us played a part in the collective effort to keep the country ticking over as the pandemic eased.
To be fair, most teachers have not been idle; they’ve held Zoom classes for their exam students, setting and marking classwork for others.
HOWEVER, from teachers’ refusal to agree to the merest suggestion that a reopening of schools in June for even one or two days could be explored to their fiery objections to the emergency Leaving Cert marking system, they studiously assert their own interests first and foremost. Same as it ever was, despite these extraordinary times.
The security of a permanent and pensionable job with long holidays are, arguably, conditions all workers should enjoy, if they desire it.
But the example provided by teachers about how society benefits when a group of workers is treated with respect and generosity hardly inspires confidence.
As the mindset of entitlement and exceptionalism shrinks in other sheltered sectors, even the Dáil, it seems to expand inversely in teaching.
How can a profession believe that childcare issues are an excuse for the refusal to reopen schools when so many workers of child-bearing age have to negotiate that same obstacle at present? How can a profession shout about its right to avoid health risks when other essential workers are obliged to put up and shut up for far less pay?
What’s so special about teachers that they in a position to cause even more distress to school-leavers by threatening to boycott the system of predicted grades as it doesn’t indemnify them adequately if they act unreasonably? No worker in this country, no butcher, baker or candlestick maker has ever been indemnified for unreasonable behaviour. The issue was resolved only after additional reassurances about indemnity were given.
But the icing on the cake is surely that – after closing off any prospect of returning to school in the summer term with their truculent refusal to contemplate half days for children or socially distant classrooms – the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation is busily dampening expectations about schools reopening in September and warning the Department about opening ‘prematurely’.
IT SEEMS that our large class sizes are a barrier to opening schools, as has already occurred in several of our European neighbours with, as yet, no spike in infections.
Our large class size is not unrelated to our teachers being among the best paid in the world, a fact that is rarely aired in public.
To do so would risk the expectation that teachers face the future with optimism and positivity rather than on permanent lookout for problems and pitfalls about how they might be short-changed. Teachers know the damage that has been caused to children’s social and learning development due to prolonged absence from school.
They should be rolling their sleeves up at the prospect of putting that right. Isn’t that what their vocation is about?