FROM THE ARCHIVES:As the annual teachers' conferences got under way in 1983, Education Correspondent Christina Murphy interviewed teachers about the realities of school life for a series called Teachers Talking. This excerpt is from her interviews with primary teachers in deprived areas of Dublin.
There were 29 pupils in her fifth class in a large working-class area and she had decided idly to work out the family size of each one.
She read the results with amazement in her voice: there was only one family with three children – and that was a deserted wife; there was one family with 14 children, two with 11, three with 10, four with eight, eight with seven, five with six and another five with five children each.
“If I was teaching in a middle-class area, three or four would have been the norm,” she said.
She hadn’t even asked them about any extra illegitimate children: “It is quite the norm around here that one of the older daughters has a baby and it is taken in by the family as one of their own.” All the group nodded vigorously, this was their experience too. “It’s quite common for a child to have an uncle a few classes up from him,” said one.
“I teach infants and they come in having had a can of Coke for breakfast or nothing at all. It’s quite common for them to bring in nothing but sweets for lunch. The other day one came in with a half-packet of biscuits for his lunch. I’ve noticed them asking for the free Corporation sandwiches early in the morning and asked them had they had no breakfast and the stock answer is ‘there was no one up when I left, teacher.’’
“We are constantly on the lookout for children who are hungry,’’ said Mick. ‘‘It’s a real problem in our schools. It’s quite common for them to come in without breakfast.’’
“They are obsessed with cars,’’ said Paul and again there was a chorus of agreement. “Even the small children draw cars all the time and they don’t just draw ‘a’ car, they draw Fiestas or BMW’s. They know all the models.’’
“The kids who steal the car are real heroes, two cars a night go regularly in our area,’’ said Paul. “They draw the cars in school and then they go out after them at night. It’s almost like the cavemen drawing the animals they were going to hunt.’’
“Television,’’ said Rosaleen. “It is on all the time. It’s just a permanent thing in their homes. Nobody listens to anybody else, the telly is on all the time.’’
“And the videos, videos are the big thing,’’ said Mick. “I’d say there are about four families in every class that have videos.’’ Joe had visited a class recently where there was 50 per cent unemployment among the parents and 30 per cent video ownership. “Oh, they come in and talk about the video films, and ‘the ones that only me Daddy can see, Miss’. The television is on at night-time and the video film at breakfast.’’
“It’s a whole different world to the middle-class family,’’ said Rosaleen. “There is a huge cultural gap and as a teacher you are part of that gap. You have to make a very conscious effort to identify with their culture.’’
“Unemployment is just a part of life,’’ said Mick. “I did a survey on preferred times for parents’ meetings recently and only 2 per cent wanted them at night-time. The favoured time was 10.00 am”. . .
“Since corporal punishment was abolished there is a big problem, a very real problem. It’s not that we used it much, we very rarely did. . . .’’
“The day it was abolished I met a man who is in his 60s and had been teaching in a tough school all his life and he was so distressed, he was practically in tears. He’d gone into the school and this kid had said, ‘You’re only a f...ing bollocks and you can’t lay a finger on me now.’ In fact he hadn’t used corporal punishment before, but a lot of kids heard about it on television and adopted an attitude of ‘That’s fixed you now, you can’t do anything to me anymore.’’’
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