IPPN

Are Irish teachers cosseted?

Published: 04 November 2008

Tue, Nov 04, 2008

Madam, - The central thesis of Pat Courtney's article of November 3rd seems to be that Irish teachers are an exceptionally cosseted group compared with teachers in England.

However, Mr Courtney's thesis is deeply flawed because it is teachers in England who are the European exception, being distinguished by their low status, lack of professional autonomy and slavish participation in England's notorious "presenteeism" and long-hours culture.

All these no doubt contribute to ongoing difficulties in recruitment (recent figures reveal a shortfall of 75 per cent in recruitment targets for graduate chemistry teachers and a 82 per cent shortfall for physics). The retention rates of newly qualified teachers are similarly dismal and are reflected in the large numbers of able and well-qualified young teachers from Northern Ireland who prefer to return home to uncertain employment prospects after one or two years' experience of the English system.

Mr Courtney also does not mention that the English system is overseen by an enormous, multi-layered and costly bureaucracy and that the end result is a national literacy standard that struggles to reach the equivalent of 12 years.

While he may look back on his own experience as overwhelmingly positive, there is very little evidence that any other European country has anything to learn from the English system - apart from how not to do things. Anyone who doubts this should ask the Scots. - Yours, etc,

CHARLES GLENN, Deanfield, Derry.

Madam, - While Pat Courtney 's comments will doubtless cause some ire among the teachers of Ireland, it is refreshing to see such a well-articulated comparison between the teaching practice and attitudes of the UK system and Ireland's.

I was educated in the Northern Ireland system at both primary and post-primary level. I attended a Christian Brothers school and I look back with tremendous appreciation for the exemplary teaching from many of the "Brothers" and lay teaching staff who demonstrated the vocational aspects of their work by undertaking many extra-curricular activities with students in a co-operative manner. I greatly benefited from their dedication, inspiration, and hard work and my parents appreciated the chance to attend parent-teacher meetings several times a year, often scheduled after 7pm to facilitate working parents.

Believe me, if we in Ireland think we have the best education system in the world, we need to take a long hard look at ourselves. Our education system and curriculum and our teachers (primary and post-primary) are operating in the dark ages and it is time for a wake-up call to vocationalism (let's leave patriotism for another day) to help all our children to be the best that they can be. - Yours, etc,

Dr SEAN MacARDHAILL, Maigh Cuillin, Co Gaillimhe.

Madam, - I hope when I retire from teaching in 20 years that I will be afforded the same space as Pat Courtney to reminisce. And I wouldn't begrudge Mr Courtney his self-aggrandising memories of relating skilfully to his colleagues and students had it not been for the presentation of his "typical day" as if it were unique to the good old days.

Teaching always has been and always will be predicated on the quality of relationship between teacher and pupil. Anyone who has ever taught anyone anything, be they teacher, teenager, mechanic or Messiah, knows this simple truth.

It is this very banality however, and the personal tone in which it is written, that makes the piece so insidious. Because the ungracious implication throughout (that teachers in Ireland today are not delivering the self-sacrifice and love of Mr Courtney's yore) is thereby slipped into our consciousness all the more slickly. Yet, had it not been for the collusion of the sub-editor at one end ("A retired Irish-born teacher. . . suggests teachers here protest a little too much") and Mr Courtney's non-sequitur at the other ("Now that the pinch has come will they put their pupils first or protect their own selfish interests?") there wouldn't even have been the veneer of an actual point. And this lack of logical argument from a former science teacher! Really, Mr Courtney could do better.

He avers that he never complained as if that were a virtue in itself. I don't know if they taught SPHE (Social, Personal Health Education) back in his day in England, but asserting yourself has been given the thumbs up recently here. And what's more, I didn't stand on Molesworth Street last Wednesday for myself or my colleagues. I stood there to assert the rights of my students and my children to be in classes small enough to promote the very relationships between teacher and pupil which Mr Courtney claims to value. - Yours, etc,

CONOR NORTON, Woodlands Drive, Stillorgan, Co Dublin.