Sir, - So Ms Carmel Wynne has now decided that teachers are responsible for the delay in implementing RSE in our schools (E & L, February 8th). She lists a number of reasons for this most of them quite insulting to the intelligence of teachers and the entire teacher-training body in this country. Teachers are afraid, she suggests, that they will be "confronted with questions that will challenge their own personal attitudes and moral values."
Come, come, Ms Wynne. Surely you are not trying to tell us that the 75 per cent of teachers who have rejected RSE did so because they are not mature enough to face themselves? What utter rubbish. Most reasonable people would believe that teachers just don't want to spend their time in a classroom discussing sex with children. And thank God for that. They want to get on with doing the job they were trained to do and they are wise enough to know that naughty children will do anything to avoid having to learn the basics of education, and talking sex in class is certainly one way of achieving their aim.
There is, however, another reason why so many teachers are reluctant to take on the Government's RSE, and Ms Wynne should be aware of it. Indeed so also should The Irish Times because of the threat of legal action on account of RSE at some future date. Most teachers know that an official complaint about the graphic and pornographic nature of many of the materials in the Resource Catalogue for RSE was made to Garda Commissioner Pat Byrne. And his representative, Inspector John Murphy of Henry Street Garda Station, Limerick, has now reported back. - Yours, etc.,
Nora Bennis, Revington Park, Limerick.