Regardless, the story grew legs and swiftly became a national headline. Reader comments came in thick and fast and public opinion was as varied as school curriculum, which, according to Ms Pritchard, lacks the teaching of life skills.
The word teacher is a loose one.
For the purposes of schooling I prefer the word educator. We all have the ability to teach and to be self-taught but we are not all qualified educators.
Teaching is not exclusive to schools. Learning starts at birth and extends well beyond the school gates.
Despite this we are increasingly placing more and more demands and expectations on our school teachers and the education department in general. Where once it was their job to educate us in a fairly small group of core subjects with a handful of options thrown in, now it seems, in a growing number of cases, schools are charged with the task of literally being a surrogate parent/family.
Many schools, with the aid of charities, are now feeding and clothing our kids. Teaching them values which should be taught at home, contending with some violent and disturbing behaviours and counselling them on personal issues, as well as trying to accommodate for every cultural issue under the sun, let alone the political ones. The options are constantly being added to, resulting in core subjects like maths and English, at one time taught daily, now appearing on the timetable just three times a week. Just how much more must our already over-burdened schools be charged with?
Every time they put a measure in place to address an issue, another one just happens to crop up.
Yes, there is poverty, trust me, I know from personal experience, but there is also an increasing element of parents who are just not doing their job and where is the incentive to put that right when the school inevitably comes to the party and does their job for them? Teaching the basics like respect and pride doesn't cost anything but time. Encouraging your child to teach themselves is also free.This current system is little better than enabling and while the attempts to fix the problems are supported by many, nothing changes the fact that the kids they are trying to help still go home to poverty, hunger, neglect, abuse and general dysfunction. Perhaps a school for the parents would be of more benefit.
Teachers, good teachers, have my utmost respect and admiration. I for one certainly do not envy them. As the nation's educators they shoulder a huge responsibility. They trained long and hard for their qualification.
Are there some bad apples? Those that repeatedly hand out worksheets and then sit round and do nothing, as Ms Pritchard suggests in her speech. Yes, I have no doubt that there are. My own kids and their friends have told me about them, but thankfully they are a minority. The ones who sit on iChat in class or the ones who step out several times in a lesson to use their cellphones and those that make disparaging personal remarks.
But I am a believer that kids who want to learn will learn, regardless of environment. If necessary, they become more pro-active in their own education.
Our country's good educators need to be treasured and their talents put to good and appropriate use.
Teaching our children to be reliant on the state is not a good life lesson and nor is it realistic.
At the rate we're going these highly skilled professionals will end up in an option class teaching our kids to do the family laundry that they brought from home. They're worth so much more than that.
-Kate Stewart is a politically incorrect columnist of no repute. She does welcome your feedback - investik8@gmail.com
