Irish Examiner view: Please explain vaccine threat

Teachers in conference

Teacher unions have primed their members to consider strike action over revised Covid-19 vaccine priorities.

It is surprising that an inventive bookmaker has not offered, as a kind of post-Cheltenham methadone, its customers an opportunity to bet on which issue teachers might threaten to strike over as their Easter conference season begins. As unquenchable as Mayo’s All-Ireland dreams, that annual threat, like Mayo’s longing, is a part of our national furniture. The threats, like Mayo challenges, may not have the sting those who offer them imagine.

This year’s issue has at least the virtue of novelty. Teacher unions have primed their members to consider strike action over revised Covid-19 vaccine priorities. The TUI and ASTI have prepared emergency motions ahead of today’s annual conferences. It is believed the INTO is following suit.

It does not minimise the threat faced by any group to suggest it would be very interesting to be in a classroom when a student asks a science or maths teacher to explain the logic behind their frustration as age is a defining pandemic vulnerability. Covid simply does not pose the same risk to a 25-year-old teacher as it does to a 55-year-old teacher so it is entirely rational to vaccinate by age rather than by profession.

If that discussion would be revealing it would be even more so in the context of how our young people learn ideas around restraint, obligation, civic morality, and how power and position can be misused to put self-interest ahead of social good — especially as example is still the most powerful teaching tool.