When you talk to small children all day, it is easy to lose sight of the nature of dialogue between adults.
That seems to be a core problem with the bizarre self aggrandising scenes at various teacher union meetings in Ireland this past week.
As well as self publicising meaningless protests regarding international diplomacy, a small cohort of activists launched a motion to seek an end to the necessity of a certificate to teach in Catholic primary schools in Ireland at the INTO meeting.
In comically aghast descriptions, some of them sounded like they’d watch one too many showings of Angela’s Ashes:
When I went to the interview the very first question I was asked was about religious instruction.
I was made to feel uncomfortable for several minutes and eventually I just gave up and gave an answer that represented myself truthfully and authentically. I was unsuccessful in my interview.
The government has claimed that they will deliver 400 multi denominational schools by 2030.
This of course, is not about parental or student choice, this is about teachers throwing their weight around.
Parents are very happy with the Catholic ethos of schools in Ireland, particularly primary schools. At countless public consultations, diocesan education authorities are told by parents that they want the school to remain Catholic. They are not told this by a small number or by practising Catholics only, they are told this by a wide variety of parents.
There is really nothing substantial stopping the most competent and enlightened generation of Irish people, thanks to their liberalism, from building their own schools on a large school. And housing for teachers at that.
If the old Ireland could do all of these things, the Ireland imagined in the films of Harvey Weinstein, then surely the enlightened Ireland of Simon Harris can achieve these things ten times over?
As with everything else in the past 10 years, this generation will find out the hard way that gloating at John Charles McQuaid’s ghost will not bring them lower levels of emigration, lower house prices and greater social cohesion.
The coverage of the motion had some very funny quotes attributed to teachers, one person prefaced their call to remove religious instruction from schools by stating that they had been to Medjugorje a number of times. Another said that they were a practising Catholic but that they were raising their child as an atheist. Another said that they were a traveller and felt that they wanted the certificate gone, even though parishes were funding travellers to become teachers.
We could not write comedy like that.
