Madam, - No other professional group of people would allow themselves be treated with such insulting contempt as teachers have been treated by their employer, the Minister for Education and Science. If he thinks that we will tolerate such disregard for our dignity and self-worth for the sake of a few euro increase in the benchmarking awards he is storing for himself the future wrath of the teaching profession.
If we treated our pupils with such disrespect as the Minister is treating us then society, rightfully, would not tolerate it.
Why should we as teachers not fulfil the requirements of our contracts, even though the lengthening of the first term until two days before Christmas is educationally unsound and teachers will be facing vastly depleted classes?
The Minister should indeed send his inspectors around to every school in the country on Tuesday and check for attendance, not of teachers - who will be present - but for the attendance of all the missing pupils who will be absent on account of the unsound and dictatorial decision of a Minister who has failed to provide for an adequate truant service for pupils. - Yours etc.,
BRENDAN BUTLER, Swords, Co. Dublin
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Madam, - As a long-standing and dedicated primary teacher, I write to register my considerable disgust at the treatment of the teachers' Christmas holiday issue in the media in recent days.
The idea of teachers wanting to "mitch" not only infantilises us but shows an utter disregard for the professional standards which obtain among the primary teaching population.
To threaten teachers with the whipping boy of the inspectorate further serves to underestimate our intelligence and our professional approach to the task of educating the leaders of the future, and, in an old phrase, "sustaining progress" into the future. - Yours etc.,
MIRIAM O'SULLIVAN, Glasnevin Educate Together NS, Glasnevin, Dublin 9.