Those that cant Teach Gym

Slip on your Donkey jacket, paint the fence with scab and let the eggs go rotten to through at the buses, it's time to strike! Here in the land of the gold and green it seems everyone thinks they are hard done by, the nurses, the teachers the confectionery workers, the tinker, the tailor, the soldier, the spy.

This Thursday the teachers are going on strike, following on from the nurses etc. They say it's a strike about conditions, its a strike about pay, its a strike about employment contracts, but funny that all these things come to a head when Friday is a curriculum day and Monday is a bank holiday. The fact is teachers want more money, don't let the claims about child and education welfare fool you if they were offered 6% rise and no reduction in class sizes, no investment in schools they would be reading the paper at the front of little Johnny's English class like every other day.

What i don't get it this, I'm sure there are economics teachers who are striking, business studies teachers who will not be on the picket line, but sitting at home in the warm saying they are making a stand. Would one of these people please tell me where they think the money is going to come from? How is the pay rise going to be achieved without cuts to someone Else's job or increased taxation?

At the core of the global economy at the moment is a problem, its not one of a lack of money, its one of an increase in greed, a failure to recognise we all have our place in the social ladder. When i was young nobody expected teachers to earn what brain surgeons do, nobody thought a cleaner should earn what an accountant does, but now these comparisons are thrown around with scant thought of the long term implications.

Lets look at a hypothetical future, the teachers have won there pay rise and now earn the same as doctors. So Johnny, who amazingly passed his English exam despite the poor standard of teaching has two choices:

1. Train to be a doctor, spend 6 years at medical school to then work every night, weekend, public holiday shift there is at an emergency ward in his local hospital. He spends his day working to pay back the huge debt he ran up becoming a doctor and lets not forget if he makes a mistake people die.

2. Train to become a teacher, spend two years at colleague to then get 14 weeks holiday a year, never have to work nights or weekends, no public holiday shifts. He gets days off to meet parents and to write up his reports and if he makes a mistake well lets be fair nobody is going to die and he can always just blame the fact he had to many patients.

Both options offer Johnny the same salary a year, so why oh why is he ever going to take option one? The fact is there is a social ladder in terms of employment vs standard of living and so there should be or we end up with no doctors, accountants, CEO's, lawyers, judges, police officers, fireman, ambulance drivers, nurses. If we could all earn $100K a year being a postman we would.

So to teachers i say this, get back to the classroom, do the job you chose to do and stop moaning, many in the private sector are loosing their jobs, are taking pay cuts, are being put on 4 day weeks and only get 4 weeks holiday a year often unpaid if they are on casual contracts... Teaching... EASY LIFE!