Caution for teachers

WE HAVE always held the view that teachers, like other professionals in the public service, should be adequately paid. We can have no fundamental quarrel then with the programme of demonstrations planned by teachers seeking a better deal from the CPO in their on-going wage negotiations for the 2002-2005 period. But while engaging in such agitation must be accepted as their right, it seems important to warn teachers and their union, TTUTA, about the damage they could inflict on the education of the nation’s children if they carry their protest action too far. In other words, they must be careful to strike a proper balance; while finding ways to express their dissatisfaction they should not abdicate their basic responsibility to the children under their charge. We issue this warning out of past experience with similar issues when teachers’ protest led to a level of prolonged absenteeism in schools that seriously disrupted the system.
 
The current TTUTA-CPO negotiations, which seem unfortunately belated, are apparently not going well. Why, we must wonder, should such bargaining still be in progress when the three-year period it covers is more than half-way through? According to union president Trevor Oliver, the latest offer from the CPO was rejected since it was considered “a minute movement to close the gap.” If Oliver is right and the union is simply seeking to upgrade teachers’ salaries to the level of what the external market paid persons having the same qualifications, then it seems to us that the CPO ought to make a more reasonable offer. Again, we can only hope that good sense will prevail on both sides and that the dispute will not deteriorate into another disruptive affair. The noises coming out of TTUTA are not reassuring; the union has already taken a decision to shut down the nation’s schools on Friday 28, calling on the country’s 14,000 teachers to march in a mass rally ending at Woodford Square in Port-of-Spain. If this event could be considered as lightning, according to one union source, then “the real thunder” is yet to come.

But while we may be inclined to support the teachers in their bid for better salaries, at the same time we must express our unhappiness over the performance, productivity, deportment and commitment of the teaching profession as a whole. The disturbing level of illiteracy and innumeracy among our young people must, in some measure, be credited to their delinquency. Just a week ago, Education Minister Hazel Manning, replying to a question in the House of Representatives, disclosed, among other things, a high failure rate among students who sat the CXC English and mathematics examinations last year. A total of 45 and 50 percent respectively failed to gain pass marks in these two vital subjects.

While TTUTA is preparing to give the Government “thunder” over its quest for higher salaries, we wonder how much of its energy and influence is being exerted to remedy the weaknesses within the profession. Last year, the union president himself was forthright in his condemnation of teachers for setting bad examples by their unpunctuality and poorly planned lessons. Some, he noted, were a disgrace to the profession. The Education Ministry has also reported to TTUTA a large number of teachers who are either not punctual or absent from school. In this regard, the Principal of Presentation College, Chaguanas, observed that some teachers are drawing salaries under false pretence. Such a work ethic, of course, would be anathema in the private sector. Peter should not be made to pay for Paul, so the teachers are entitled to their salary increase, but something should be done about the spoilers who do not deserve it.