I’m Privileged

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I am privileged.  This morning I woke up in my own bed, and was able to make breakfast with fresh water and food.

I am privileged.  Nobody took my land and forced me to live in a camp, behind walls of wire and guns.

I am privileged.  Today nobody tried to kill my children.  Nobody tried to kill me or my wife.

I am privileged.  I can go to a doctor when needed, I can go to school without the risk of it being shelled, I can go to work without having to go through a checkpoint.

I am privileged.  I can go to the shops in safety.

I am privileged.  I don’t live in Gaza.

We all know that Israel is currently attacking the political group, Hamas.  Hamas, in turn, has been attacking Israel for years.  Hamas’ charter apparently includes the wish to destroy the state of Israel.

I believe that the state of Israel has the right to exist, and obviously, this implies that it has the right to defend itself.

However, if we look at the extent of the rocket attacks by Hamas, they don’t seem to be anywhere near as deadly as propaganda would suggest.  Some research here shows that, up until the attacks by Israel 3 weeks ago, 35 Israelis had been killed by these rockets in 10 years.

In the past few weeks over 1,300 Palestinians have been killed by the the IDF.  The vast majority of the dead have been civilians, many of them children.

Schools, mosques, refugee centres, hospitals have all been targeted by the IDF.  This is not an attack on Hamas.   It is an attack on civilians.  It is brutal, it is one sided, and it is murder.

Solutions

Hamas should not be launching rockets as Israel, and it should be willing to pursue a peaceful solution.

However, Israel should not be pursing a solution that is disturbingly close to the solution that was inflicted upon the Jewish people 70 years ago.

The Irish Answer?

To my shame, the government I voted for have taken the coward’s route.  When the United Nations had a vote to investigate potential war crimes in Gaza, we abstained.

Our country had a good record of standing up for human rights around the globe.  Maybe it has something to do with our history , or the fact that Ireland is a small country in the global scheme of things.  This record has now been sullied.

Yes, I know that the defence of this decision is that the UN resolution does not cover crimes committed by Hamas, but really, with hundreds of civilians being killed weekly, everything possible should be done to stop the killing.

The future?

I don’t know how or when this conflict will be resolved.  The only thing that is sure is that any militant organisation in Gaza or any of the Palestinian territories will easily find more recruits after this.  May people are justifiable angry.  Israel has just guaranteed many more years of conflict.

After an attack today on a marketplace, wounded children were among those taken to the Al-Shifa hospital 

 

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Evening Echo column: Penny Dinners for the new poor

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Donal O'Keeffe's avatar140 characters is usually enough

Two years ago Cork Penny Dinners served about 100 meals a week. Now it’s over 1,500.  

They are supplying meals now to people they never saw before, not “just” homeless people or those with drug or alcohol dependency but people with families, parents of small children, “the new poor”, people who just can’t make ends meet. They also supply a weekly shop to several households, literally to put food on the family table.

Cork Penny Dinners is on Little Hanover Street, within sight of the Courthouse.

I walk in and one or two of the people sitting at tables turn and smile. To the right is the kitchen, all clatter and steam as volunteers bustle about. This is not an extravagant space and that will become a recurring theme. Nothing is wasted here.

A man my own age welcomes me, his hand stretched out. “How’s it going?” he asks. “Will you have…

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I am a so-called ‘lazy’ teacher

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movinginwithaboy's avatarmovinginwithaboy

I am a so-called ‘lazy’ teacher.

I work for only 40 weeks of the year. School finishes at 2:45pm every day.

I am a so-called ‘lazy’ teacher.

I teach 600 different teenagers a week, and I address each one individually by name, and ask how their weekend was, making sure to remember that John had a trip away with his choir. I stand at my classroom door and smile as they laugh at me singing songs and at me calling everyone ‘sausage’ or ‘treacle’, and wishing them an ‘amazeballs day’.

I am a so-called ‘lazy’ teacher.

I get to work for 7am, by 7:15am the car park is already a third full with my colleagues. If I arrive at 7:30am, there are no spaces left. I stay for 13, or 14 hour days, sometimes for parents’ evenings, or school concerts, or meetings about a trip. Sometimes I work this long when I return home…

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Turia Pitt magazine cover is breaking down barriers

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Amazing story. Both the woman’s bravery, and the magazine’s decision to print on the front page.

tomhickey53's avatarHICKEY'S WORLD

Turia Pitt makes the cover of The Australian Women's Weekly

I must confess I had never heard of burns survivor Turia Pitt until one of my Twitter followers in Australia sent me a picture of The Australian Women’s Weekly’s July edition. And, as you can see, its cover is a photo of the remarkable and beautiful Turia.

The reaction has been effusive, with BuzzFeed describing it as ‘probably the best women’s magazine cover ever’. Quite a statement that, and perhaps also an unintended criticism of that sector of the magazine world where the emphasis on beauty is constant, and the cover photos are practically always gorgeous women – and men.

Women’s Weekly dared to be different and in doing so was pretty courageous, but also
reflective of the diversity of women, whether it’s a disability, race or a facial difference. It also acknowledges her strength of character in turning her life around following a horrific accident and the amazing love…

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Beyond Satire

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ancailinrua's avatarAn Cailín Rua

Yesterday, 1st July 2014 saw an incident occur in Dublin city centre.

An incident that, in the way it played out, spoke volumes about our relationship with mental health in Ireland. Faced with the reality of  a potential emergency, the Irish public and media reacted in a way that painted a stark, grim and dare I say it, depressing picture of our real attitudes towards those who behave in a way that suggests mental distress.

At approximately 10.30pm yesterday morning, a shirtless man was spotted on the roof of the Abercrombie and Fitch building on College Green, where he was seen climbing back and forth between the “peak” of the building, to the roof just behind it. He then moved to the adjacent, taller Ulster Bank building where he continued to move around the roof, and for a time balanced precariously on top of a statue on top of one…

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Everybody knows teachers have an easy life!

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The experience of teaching primary in England. Worth a read

classroomhamster's avatarThe Class Room Hamster

ImageEvery so often they line my cage with newspaper, and if I’m lucky it is the readers letter page.

Over the years I have seen a high number of people writing in and moaning about how teachers are so lucky to have such an easy job. They start at 8:50 and finish mid afternoon plus have so much time off during the year including 6 weeks in the summer! How hard can it be looking after a few children for a couple of hours?

The beauty of free speech is that it allows those who have no idea about the truth to make wild comments and make themselves look more stupid than a hamster (hang on! I think I just insulted myself.) As a hamster I have never driven a lorry (legs too short to reach the pedals) nor have I ever been offered a job as a surgeon (could not afford…

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Dear Joan, or Alex

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On July 4th the Labour Party will begin counting votes on who will get to be the new leader of the party. This will hopefully be a fairly straightforward and quick poll, and we will know who will lead the party from its worst electoral defeat.

Add to the new leadership in Labour is the likelihood that there will be a cabinet reshuffle during the Summer.  This, I once hoped would be a cause for joy, but I’m beginning to get a bit cynical now.

You see, Joan (or Alex), people who had previously believed that Labour would stand up for them are sadly disillusioned.  Cutbacks and austerity in health, education and social welfare are being touted as achievements.  Surely they are the exact opposite?  Labour ministers have led the charge to cut back in their own departments in the name of keeping the Troika happy, in the cause of shoring up the gambling debts of Ireland’s elite from the Tiger Era.  Is not keeping rich investors happy the very antithesis of what Labour stood for?

And here’s the thing.  The Troika recently called for the government to keep on track with a further 2 Billion Euro in cutbacks this year.  They announced this in the middle of your leadership campaign.  This, to me, is a clear signal as to who really calls the shots.

To take a note from Minister Quinn’s playbook, it seems that the Troika think Labour’s job is to consult on the cutbacks, not to negotiate them.  So I wonder how much will actually change.

From a teacher’s point of view, I used to hope that a cabinet re-shuffle would rid education of Ruairi Quinn, and that we would have a minister who would listen to teachers, rather than his own fabled advisers. I hoped that we could get a minister who would listen to concerns around Special Needs Provision, around concerns with the JCSA, around concerns with Pupil Teacher ratios; around management of schools, around the proper resourcing of education.  Now I doubt that much would actually change.  Yes, we may get a minster who talks a better talk, but I’m beginning to think that nothing will actually change.

You see, Joan, or Alex.  I think you have forgotten the marginalised in this country.  I think that you have forgotten about just how much hardship has been endured by normal people.

I really hope that I’m wrong.  I really hope that you heard the very clear message given by the Irish Electorate in May.  I really hope that you will finally realise that Austerity has run its course.  Ireland should not be just about balancing the books.  Ireland should also be about the quality of life of all its citizens.  More so for the most vulnerable among us.

Or, to quote Gandhi: “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.”

In very many cases recently Joan or Alex, we have failed this test of greatness.  What are you going to do about it?

 

 

A Clear Voice

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I was driving home last week and heard Liam Doran of the Irish Nurses & Midwives Organisation debating with Matt Cooper.  Something struck me.  The nurses and midwives are very lucky to have such a well well spoken man to fight their cause.  Liam has the knack of taking whatever issues are important and presenting them in a clear way.  And that is a rare skill.  He has done a huge service to his profession in putting forward the nurses and midwives’ case.  This has served them very well in the public arena.

Unfortunately, I honestly don’t feel that we teachers are so lucky.  With all the attacks on education in the past 6 years, teachers have garnered little enough public sympathy for their cause.  There are a number of reasons why this may be the case:

  • The old joke of the three best reasons to be a teacher.
  • The perception that we clock off at 4.00 with a grand free evening ahead.
  • Everyone has an opinion about what teachers should be doing.
  • The perception that teaching is ‘chalk & talk’, that teachers are not innovators

Others can debate the validity (or not) of these reasons.  I’m more concerned with the fact that we, as a profession, have not countered these perceptions, that we have not been effective in the public sphere.

I think part of the explanation is the fragmentation of the teaching unions.

There are three Teachers’ Unions in Ireland

At the Easter Conferences of the Unions, it was mooted that the ASTI & the TUI should merge.  This idea makes a lot of sense for me, at least you would have one voice to speak with on behalf of second level.

However, a bigger problem, for me, is the fact we don’t have a publicly identifiable speaker who is as recognisable as Liam Doran.  While different presidents of all teaching unions have done well in their brief tenures, the nature of a presidency that lasts just a few years means that any president doesn’t build up the profile over time that Liam Doran has managed to do.

And what can we do about the profile of our unions or officers?

Maybe the merger of the ASTI and the TUI is a good first step, but I think we need to go a bit further than that.

  • I think that such a merger should bring a new General Secretary, one who is able to put educational issues across in a clear manner
  • The Union(s) need to adapt a more proactive stance with regards to the media.  Much of what they currently publish is legalistic, or a counter-argument to what the Minister is saying.  This doesn’t work very well.  It’s a tennis match where the other guy gets to serve all the time.
  • We could do with looking at how teachers use social media.  There is a hunger out there for debate (of the 10 top viewed posts in this blog, 9 are about education)
  • We need to increase public awareness of the challenges in teaching

The Unions have a huge job to do, but I think they need to step back and examine how they have been doing it so far.  The strategy is flawed and needs to be revised.  Otherwise the attacks by this government and its minister will continue.

Defensores Fidei, and why so many have missed the point

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This has been a bad week for a lot of people.

One wit on twitter said it was a bad week for organised religion after the discovery that approximately 800 babies and small children had been disposed of (Not even buried) in what appears to be a septic tank. In other news a woman was killed by her family outside of a court in Pakistan for marrying for love, and in Sudan a woman was given the death penalty for changing her religion.  The wit missed the point.  It was a bad week for women.

A local historian by the name of Catherine Corless went through records and discovered the identities of 796 children who died while their mothers were incarcerated in ‘The Home’ a place for women who had become pregnant outside of marriage.  You can read a full article here.

My friend, Donal O’Keeffe wrote about it here and was published in the Journal here, and brilliantly draws on our humanity, and comes to the depressing conclusion that, as a nation, we simply didn’t care.  And in this I think even Donie missed the point a bit.  People did care, but they cared about the wrong things.

This comes out mostly in the commentary that you can follow online if you look at the attacks on Donal over on the tweet machine, or following his article in the Journal.  Plenty of people seem to care a lot, all right, but they care about protecting an institution.  They are more worried about a perceived attack on the Church rather than on the horrific tragedy of what happened to so many children.

And that is where we lose humanity.

Here’s my messed up theological version of events:

The Catholic Church in the 20th century was resurgent in a new republic after a few centuries of repression.  Suddenly it was the official church, and its leaders were afforded an elevation and power that they were simply not suited for.

The Church as institution became all too powerful, to the extent that people believed more in the Church itself rather than the deity that the Church is supposed to guide people towards.

I believe in God, and I believe that Jesus walked and lived on Earth and taught us a lot of things, and that what he taught us boils down to two ideas – how we should relate to each other and how we should relate to God.

Safe to say that many of the things that happened in the name of the Church during the 20th century are wildly off the mark of how Jesus wanted us to live.  Whatever happened to ‘Love your neighbour’, the lessons of the ‘Good Samaritan’ or ‘the Woman caught in sin’?

After the brutal exposure of so much child abuse you would have hoped that we learned lessons.  That hurts need to be exposed.  That we need to think more of the victims.  That nobody is served when we focus on protecting an institution.

The people on the attack over the past week, the people who think they are protecting the Church, they have missed the point.  The core of this story is the hurt that was endured by hundreds of young mothers and their babies.  The Christ I believe in would not lose that focus.  He would not be involved in attacks on those who have done so much to bring this story to light.

Some Notes:

  • If you want to follow Donal O’Keeffe on Twitter, he’s @Donal_OKeeffe
  • ‘Defensores Fidei’ means ‘defenders of the faith’ Just in case you can’t be bothered going to Google Translate!
  • To whoever wrote the comment ‘it’s been a bad week for organised religion’. Apologies for not referencing you.  I couldn’t re-trace where I’d seen your line originally.

How Circular 0030/2014 will impact on all Pupils, Teachers and Parents in Ireland.

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I don’t even know where to begin. Quinn and his department don’t even seem to like children. They’re just pegs that need to be hammered into economic units. God help any child that has special educational needs.
Quinn needs to go.

voiceforteacher's avatarvoiceforteachersblog

Voice for Teachers https://www.facebook.com/VoiceForTeachers has written a few times already about the new SNA Circular. However, we feel it is such a current and very important topic, that it deserves further discussion.

We received the following message from an NQT, who asked us not to mention her name.

“I am really worried about this SNA circular. If the Department cut SNA jobs, teaching jobs won’t be far behind. JobBridge has been used when SNA jobs were cut. I am really scared that JobBridge will be used to get free teachers too”.

Solidarity with this NQT. Voice for Teachers will continue to oppose JobBridge for teachers and for SNAs. Thank you for your message.

Thank you, also, to Donncha Mac Fhionnlaoich for sending us the following information.

Circular 0030/2014http://www.education.ie/en/Circulars-and-Forms/Active-Circulars/cl0030_2014.pdf

affects every single child, teacher and SNA in our schools. Please acquaint yourself with it. Both IMPACT and INTO have requested…

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