AIDAN GAUGHRAN TEACHING MATTERSA FORTNIGHT ago, along with more than 700 colleagues, I spent three days in Kilkenny at the INTO's Congress. Traditionally, Easter week is associated with the annual gatherings of teachers, and many column inches in newspapers along with significant air time in the broadcast media help to bring the conference to a wider audience.
A small number of commentators, for whatever reason, regularly like to portray the gatherings as some form of annual "whinge- fest" by teachers. Usually, these pundits tend to focus exclusively on demands made by teachers for improvements in salary or working conditions. You know the kind of commentary - "more money for less work with fewer pupils".
The pejorative descriptions are often employed to oppose outright such claims and sometimes to shore up some very weak opposing arguments.
Most of the time, I have little difficulty with this. We all live in a country where free speech is valued and teachers in general are well able to get their point of view across and defend it.
And to be honest, if there was no opposition to the claims of teacher unions, then much of the raison d'être of the unions would also disappear. If teachers were paid chief executives' salaries, had TDs' holidays and reasonable class sizes, there wouldn't be much to whinge about, would there? But, in truth, far more than teachers' issues are discussed at these conferences and many of the issues adopted by teachers over the years have had beneficial consequences particularly for pupils. Other effects are felt far beyond the teaching profession. Rarely of course are there overnight successes in the world of teacher unions and so many of these contributions receive less public commentary. A good example of this is the equality agenda, which my own union has over many years helped to progress. Although demands coming from teachers conferences are never likely to catch the public imagination in the way that a national event such as the Special Olympics did, the INTO has advocated consistently over years for progress on behalf of children with special needs.
A very moving example of this kind of progress was provided by INTO President Angela Dunne at this year's congress. Dunne, the mother of two deaf children now grown up, was able to highlight from direct experience how, when her boys were very young, they had no choice but to leave their home in Carlow and attend a special school in Dublin.
Today, most children with special needs can attend their local national school and additional supports are provided. While Ms Dunne generously recognised the significant contribution of Minister Mary Hanafin, in particular in securing many of these additional resources for special education, there can be few who do not realise that politicians of all parties need some degree of persuasion to take action.
This year in Kilkenny, there was strong backing from teachers for proper support for children with Down Syndrome, which I hope will lead to improvements for this small but significant group of children.
Neither are teachers' concerns with equality limited to children's issues. The INTO has a fine tradition of pursuing causes that have a wider impact in society. In the 1980s, following a teachers conference the INTO decided to support a legal challenge to inequality in the taxation system that treated married couples who were working differently to non-married people. When this case was won, it had implications for all workers, not just teachers.
The broader equality agenda for men and women has long been a feature of teachers' conferences, and teachers have played their part in demanding equal pay for equal work. No doubt there was a commentator or two at the time who dismissed this as "whinging".
Teachers' demands to remove gender- stereotyping from classroom materials provided by commercial companies and the Department of Education has also had an impact far beyond the walls of the classroom. No longer do children grow up thinking that "Mamaí sa chistin" and "Daidí ag tiomáint an charr" is the natural order of things.
This year a very significant contribution to the equality agenda was made by a member of the INTO support group for gay, lesbian and bisexual teachers. Addressing her colleagues, the chairperson of the group outlined the many challenges that this group of teachers face in society, but particularly in the workplace. Many other workers face such challenges in their own workplaces, and no doubt, some will take heart from this contribution at a teacher conference.
This year, as usual the main course on the conference menu comprised demands for increased resources for education. Among these were demands for enough day-to-day funding to make sure that schools are not subsidised by raffles and cake sales and an end to rat-infested prefabricated classrooms. And, no doubt, at some time in the future, people will look back into the past of this year's INTO conference in Kilkenny and wonder why on earth did teachers have to whinge about the Education Minister not spending money on school computers.
So to the critics of the Easter gatherings I would say, by all means have a go at the contributions to the conferences, but before you do, you might just pause and consider how many of the benefits that you or members of your family currently take for granted are directly or indirectly due to the efforts of whingers like us?
Aidan Gaughran is a primary teacher in Clonmel, Co Tipperary and a member of the INTO's education committee.
