Learning a lesson in relative values

There could have been awkward moments in the Quish household in recent months, but there weren't. In a family where discussions about art, politics and social issues are commonplace, the teachers' dispute was one of the topics that reared its head. Dermot Quish, a geography teacher and assistant principal at St Dominic's High School in Sutton, Co Dublin, explains. "I am fortunate enough that everybody knew what things were about and what was going on. They knew the reasons for the strike," he says.

As secretary of the Dublin north-east branch of the ASTI, Dermot has had more involvement than some - he had to visit the 12 schools in the area and talk to teachers on the picket line, as well as doing picket duty at his own school.

Dermot, himself president of the ASTI in 1987-88, feels he is lucky not to be in the same school as his son Eoghan, who is in his Leaving Certificate year at St Paul's College, Raheny, Dublin. Eoghan could have resented his father's involvement in the strike and the disruption of his last year at school, but due to his home environment, where discussion of the issues was encouraged, he didn't.

For Dermot, the primary issue is not pay - and he says his family know that.

"The primary issue to me is the viability of the education service. I believe we are in a situation where the actual quality of Irish education and the service given to, if you like, not just my child, but to my grandchildren - if I ever have any - and future generations of Irish people is going to be reduced unless a stand is made now in relation to teachers' pay.

"My son did find it unsettling, there is no doubt about it. My students found it unsettling, that is very true. But being a parent and a trade union member and teacher on strike, it brings to mind, very clearly, the different perspectives of the teacher and the parent." Dermot believes that parents are concerned, almost exclusively, with the future of their own offspring. They want to see their son or daughter getting the highest points and the best opportunities they can from the Leaving Cert, he says.

"At the end of the day, the teacher who is also a parent is of course concerned with his or her offspring, but they've also got the broad picture of the next generation and future generations of students."

Although it is not advantageous for his son to be doing the Leaving Cert during a year of industrial action, Dermot insists he would still support the strike, because he has to weigh up his concerns for future generations and take into account the bigger picture for education.

How does Eoghan feel about it all? Like a lot of students, from boys' schools in particular, Dermot believes Eoghan thought "this was great craic, an oul' day off here and an oul' day off there". Girls of the same age, he believes, are more responsible and more concerned about study than boys.

Although Dermot describes his son as "not the most committed to the discipline and study regime of his school, at the same time he was finding it unsettling wondering what was going to happen. Trying to get a little study regime going is difficult when you don't know the future, so it certainly was unsettling."

Dermot thinks that if his son was a student in his own school, it would have caused some embarrassment. "At the end of the day, I must say I would prefer not to be teaching my own son. I think the parent-teacher relationship should be separated from the classroom-teacher relationship.

"Sometimes I am relieved that the cards fell this way and I didn't end up teaching in a school with one of my sons in it. I would prefer that not to be the case."

He believes a parent is the last person in the world that sons or daughters will accept to teach them anything.

"If anything, it demystifies the teacher's authority," he says.