MOOD OF DELEGATES:Anger was voiced not just at the Minister but Ibec and Ictu too, writes LOUISE HOLDEN.
A MOOD OF betrayal and anger dominated the first day of the ASTI conference in Killarney as delegates speculated on a range of motives for the recent Government cutbacks in education.
Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine was book of the day: several delegates referred to her theme of governments using crises as opportunities to introduce cutbacks. “Brian Cowen sees these cuts as an achievement,” Mark Walshe, a part-time teacher from Bray, told a supportive audience. “They have used this crisis to achieve cuts that they have wanted for a long time.”
Others claimed that the Government was targeting the weakest in society because “they are the least likely to get out and vote”. There were a number of calls for action to be taken by the ASTI rather than “passing just another motion that will gather dust like every other motion passed by the ASTI since 2000”.
Ed Byrne of Fingal called for “radical action” and his assertion that the response of the ASTI to the cutbacks had been “embarrassing” was met by applause. “Our response so far has been too little,” he said, to which the audience responded in quiet chorus: “too late”. He said: “We need to take real industrial action. Real work to rule, that brings us back to doing our core jobs.”
Ictu came in for pointed criticism from a number of delegates. “We have been manipulated and betrayed by David Begg of Ictu into the most farcical two-day nonsense I’ve ever seen,” said delegate Bernard Summers, in reference to recent public sector demonstrations. “We have embarrassed ourselves and the wider trade unions.”
Minister for Education and Science Batt O’Keeffe, and his predecessor Mary Hanafin, were accused of bringing “shame” to the position. Former ASTI president Susie Hall said: “As we marched the Minister was elsewhere, watching Manchester United kick a ball. The mistake we made is expecting the Minister to care about students.
“The history is there, we’re getting a fair flavour of the style. Hanafin stood at our conference and told us, ‘take the children with special needs into your classrooms and I will put the resources there to meet them’. Far from that, the paltry, meagre resources that were there will be removed. Shame on you Minister.”
Several speakers called for the delegates to sit on their hands and to give Mr O’Keeffe a chilly reception on arrival. They stopped short of calling for a walkout, although a small number of people left the auditorium as Mr O’Keeffe took the podium.
Prior remarks by the Minister about his own education came back to haunt him: he was quoted as claiming that his schooling in a class of 50 pupils “did me no harm”. He left himself open to a slew of opposing diagnoses, such as delegate Frank Killilea’s assertion that Mr O’Keeffe was “sadly affected” by his overcrowded classroom, as evidenced by his “lack of knowledge of the education brief”.
A motion to highlight the effect of these cuts in public and the media was met with derision by a number of delegates.
Bernard Summers referred to the “disgraceful complicity of the media, providing willing collusion and unlimited access to Ibec . . . Delegates, you have no idea how angry I am and I’m not the angriest person in this hall by a long way.”