Myers is trolling the teachers again

By Kevin Myers

Tuesday December 07 2010

Cut to the chase; why were all our schools shut down for the first 10 days of real winter? Was there a hidden paragraph in the Croke Park deal which no one outside the teaching profession noticed, namely:
"When teachers do not feel conditions are quite right for teaching, our schools shall be shut until the unions feel they should be open. Teachers shall still be paid for their time off, but shall not be expected to make good the lost teaching time during their annual holidays."
I already know the teachers' reaction to this column: shrill and angry. When they had their conferences last Easter, my name was invoked (as was John Walshe's) as a hate-figure. That teachers might still be living in a wholly unreal world -- as indeed is the entire public sector under the shelter of that infamous and unprincipled capitulation to union-power -- was not even considered back then. No, indeed: those who say it is raining, with hurricanes to come, are apparently the wicked ones. Blame them, not the weather.
Last week, I took some of my six weeks' annual leave. In the gathering snow in local farmers' suppliers, customers were queuing up to buy salt to keep their farms working. Employees there who lived in the heart of the Wicklow Hills got up before 6am to make sure they got to work on time. Every shop in Blessington was open by first light. Kenny's Bakery -- which in a brilliant gesture of defiance began fresh-baking superb French sticks and pastries, seven days a week, just as the recession really took hold -- was open as always at 8am. In Ballymore Eustace, all the businesses have remained steadfastly trading, though snowfall there is now well over two feet.
On Wednesday, we went to Dublin Airport. Everyone was working flat out to ensure the airport and the airlines functioned. We returned on Friday. There was an air of utter determination to ensure that it was Business As Usual. Yet throughout Ireland over the past 10 days, all our schools have remained closed. There is and can be no justification for this. If every single business around us can open while the mornings are still dark, and the snow lies thick on the fields, why are the schools not open?
One friend (not local) rang the local school manager, a Catholic priest (another column for another day) to know why the school was closed. Two teachers had reported they couldn't make it to school, and so he had closed the entire school. All right: did Aer Lingus choose not to fly anywhere because a couple of pilots were marooned behind a snowdrift? Did this newspaper not appear because a couple of printers had trouble getting to Citywest? You know the answer to such inane questions.
Teachers not being able to get to work is one excuse for our closed schools. Excuse number two is health and safety: snow on the playground, et cetera. Good. But is there not snow on the hills where the schoolchildren have spent the last week or more sledging? And if lawyers' greed has made litigation arising from schoolyard snow and ice too likely, why were teachers and parents not mobilised to clear the snow? If farmers were able to buy large amounts of salt to clear their farms of snow, why were school management boards not able to do likewise in our schools?
Last week alone, in only the third month of this semester, Irish schoolchildren lost 4pc of their total education for the year. To judge from last winter, we might have another four months of bad weather ahead of us. Are our schools to close every time we get a snowfall? And if they do, how will our teachers spend their time? Marooned at home? Or perhaps shopping, or getting their hair done (according to hairdressers, last week was a particularly good one for teachers).
And what happens to the children of two-job parents? Who will mind them while the schools are closed, yet the rest of the economy (well, what's left of it) still functions?
Okay, so you teachers don't like me writing a column like this, and you'll probably ask silly, angry questions at your next conferences about how much I earn, and how easy I have it. These are irrelevancies. Just answer this, please. When we saw ordinary working people rising well before dawn on bitterly cold mornings across Ireland to make sure they'd get to their jobs on time, in what way were you doing your Socratic duty by not working? If all the economic institutions of Ireland, our buses, our trains, our airlines, and this newspaper, were able to operate in those Arctic conditions, why not the schools (or, indeed, dear God, Trinity College)?
I don't want to appear melodramatic here, but we all know what is now at stake: the very survival of Ireland as a self-governing entity, rather than as an abject economic colony of the ECB. So, in precisely what way have Ireland's teachers been helping Ireland's future in the past 10 days?
Equally, what lesson have they been teaching the schoolchildren in their charge? That bad weather is a good excuse for dossing?
- Kevin Myers
Irish Independent