A chara, - I was interested in reading Emmet Oliver's report (The Irish Times, February 19th) on Dr Maureen Gaffney's lecture to the recent meeting of the Irish Primary Principal's Network at Galway, having attended myself.
Dr Gaffney's central thesis is that change is here to stay and the aim of a variety of institutions is to survive the revolution. The business world is at the cutting edge, hierarchies are crumbling, structures are being flattened by relentless competition.
In exhorting schools to adopt business ways, she says that business invests in its individual workers so that the maximum profit may be achieved. The "short lead" is the key modern skill. The principal teacher, as school leader or even as chief executive officer, must embrace market forces, find solutions, develop new models of service delivery and most importantly realise that time is money.
Gaffney demands that principals come up with a future vision for their schools. In Galway I rejected her business orientated exhortation. I did so again yesterday morning at our school assembly when I told the students and staff that together with the parents/guardians and board of management, we were an organic community, growing together in our separate ways, caring for each other, learning according to our own capabilities and, most importantly, loving each other as the image of God.
Would that we were left alone by the business types who should know that schools are in fact at the nexus of change in society. - Yours, etc.,
Anthony Jordan, Gilford Road, Dublin 4.