SPHE Teacher's Interview - What Happens in the Classroom... - Mod Note Added to OP PLEASE READ

I have no idea who John McGuirk is, nor does ‘Alive’ rings any bells. I can make a guess at the types of genre of publication though, given your haste to ascribe them to my reading collection. Try harder next time.

The bedrock of any school has to be academics. If you don’t understand that, I suspect your understanding of pedagogy is limited to say the least.

My eldest daughter is 7. Her teacher is a recent college graduate and is 23/24 at most. Whilst she is an excellent primary school teacher, she is in no way more qualified to imbue my child with critical thinking skills, than me or my wife. We are involved parents, both personally and professionally successful, who are far more experienced, qualified, and frankly accountable for ensuring our children have the ability to probe, to learn, and to question, particularly if the material delivered is inappropriate or egregious in any way.

Now you may feel comfortable outsourcing your parental responsibilities to a school, but that paradigm does not work for my or for many other families.

The irony of you lecturing me on tech is laughable. I have an almost 20-year career in the industry. I can assure you that I am far better placed, than some semi-digitally literate teacher, to educate my children on the pros/cons of technology and how to interface with it. The same way, we as parents are best placed to equip our children with the tools they need to succeed in life.

You may decide to outsource some of that to teachers of variable quality. Go right ahead. That model doesn’t work for my family or for those with whom we surround ourselves.

No, no, I understood precisely the message you were trying to convey, albeit in an entirely inarticulate manner.

I’m not an expert on all the topics you’ve enumerated, but what I do possess is the ability to learn, and to learn very rapidly. Let’s take one of your talking points above, immigration. I live in West Dublin and two of my children have already asked why certain women in the area wear hijabs. We’ve delved into their religious beliefs, as much as is possible with a five and seven year old and discussed concepts like legal vs. illegal and economic vs. asylum-seeking streams of inward migration. They’ll make up their own minds as they mature around the levels of inward migration that are sustainable for this country.

Do you believe that a regular teacher is better equipped to discuss sensitive topics of this nature with my children? With respect, both my wife and I have significantly higher academic and professional credentials than the average teacher working in the Irish education system. My wife is teaching our daughter Irish because her teacher has openly admitted that her own Irish isn’t great. I’m teaching my kids a European language in which I am fluent, because it’s not offered in the school. Are you suggesting we should forego this as parents and devolve all responsibility to the school? It very much sounds that way.

Oh, and don’t you worry about my 7 year thinking for herself. She’s as bright as a button and already is capable of coherence not common amongst the denizens of this site..

Agreed. This back-and-forth is futile. We fundamentally disagree on the role of parents vs. schools in the development and formation of our children. You won’t be changing my mind.

However, I do respect your opinion as a fellow parent. You know first-hand the trials and tribulations of this most crucial role. Despite disagreeing with you, I wish you well on the path that you and your family choose to pursue. I certainly place more stock in your view point than those of a child-free individual, interjecting with their ludicrous critique of a subject on which they have zero domain expertise.