Letters to the Editor: One thing’s a cert, teachers can judge

Government needs to step up and show leadership in education

Teachers are not good judges of progress?

Managers make judgments on interview candidates with one hour of exposure. Within a few months of a new employee starting, managers have formed a strong view on whether their choice was right or not. After a few years, managers could plot with a lot of accuracy the career trajectory of any staff member.

A GAA manager, having managed a team all the way up from U14, can make a pretty good assessment of how his or her minor team will fare this year, even before training has started.

But teachers can’t possibly make any prediction on how their students of five/six years will perform, without an assessment from the recent two months. Really?

Kevin Mullins

Kilmallock

Co Limerick

This is the tail wagging the dog

Secondary teachers’ union ASTI has refused to go back to work after Christmas, rejected the new public sector pay deal, and pulled out of Leaving Certificate talks.

This is, of course, with the pupils’ best interests at heart!

The modus operandi of ASTI at the moment appears to be to say no to everything. Militancy at all costs.

Pulling out of the Leaving Cert talks is motivated by one reason alone — money.

Rejecting the public sector pay deal is all about money. Nothing else.

Imagine if the nurses, doctors, supermarket workers, supply chain workers had adopted similar attitudes during the pandemic.

This is a classic ‘tail wagging the dog’ scenario. Minister Norma Foley, the Department of Education, and the Government need to assume leadership quickly and show it is not ASTI who are running the education system.

Aodán McCaul

Sunday’s Well

Cork City

Get back to the talks table ASTI

The decision by the ASTI to withdraw from talks on the Leaving Certificate is beyond belief.

Surely, any trade union worth its salt will or should realise that nothing of any substance will be resolved by taking such action.

Return to the table and resolve your differences. Step up and re-engage, if for nothing else but for the consideration of the Leaving Certificate students who have suffered enough already.

Ta McElligott

Raheen

Limerick

Leaving Cert cannot go ahead

At what point is this inept Government going to realise that their indecisiveness regarding the Leaving Certificate plans — or apparent lack of them — for the 2021 cohort of students and parents is an issue demanding immediate decision making, rather than the kick the can down the road approach seen so far?

It is obvious to all, bar the people tasked with making the decisions, that the Leaving cannot go ahead this year, as students have spent at least four months outside the classroom over the past academic year.

The stress levels being imposed on these students and their parents is unnecessary and this group will hold these politicians to account for their brazen incompetence.

At the forefront of this show of Government ineptitude is the current Minister for Education who has shown already she is quite incapable of handling the duties that go with Ministerial office.

Harry O’Grady

Adare

Co Limerick

Travel fine should have hit sooner

Fining travellers going abroad should have happened months ago.

All ports should also have been closed, except for import and export purposes. It’s a disgrace that airlines and ferries are still selling tickets at all. They, too, should be fined for each ticket they sell.

Meanwhile, EU Commissioner Urusla von der Leyen’s recent incompetence is shocking. ‘Learning’ from perfectly avoidable errors isn’t learning at all, especially at von der Leyen’s level.

Dr Florence Craven

Bracknagh

Co Offaly

Would Taoiseach rush to see Trump?

Would our Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, be as keen to go on this year’s St Patrick’s Day junket to the White House if Donald Trump was still the incumbent president?

Liam Power

Dundalk

Co Louth

Covid: Time to change message

For almost one year, we have been asked to do more and more, and more again.

On Thursday morning, we got news on the radio of another two months of lockdown.

Of course, this was underpinned with the core message of we need to do more again.

There hasn’t been a coherent, compassionate and complete communications campaign for 12 months, other than repeating this core message.

It has resulted in division, anxiety and will do nothing to reverse the substantial erosion of national solidarity that once existed in our response to this pandemic.

For those of us who have weathered the last 11 months the time to change the message is critical.

Hope isn’t the possibility of a vaccine programme by autumn. We need and deserve more, and we need it right now.

Gregory Higgins

Carrignavar

Co Cork

Vaccines: Ireland must inject pace

My friends and siblings in the UK have already been vaccinated. In fact the UK expects to have all over 70s (estimated to number 15m) vaccinated within days, three times the population of Ireland. 

Here in Ireland, I do not personally know anyone who has even been given a date for vaccination, never mind having received it.

Joe Mason

Cork

Over to you Garda deputy chief

The best thing about Shawna Coxon, deputy police chief in Toronto, being made a deputy Garda Commissioner is that she is just the expert to advise Irish authorities regarding the decriminalisation of marijuana.

Canada decriminalised marijuana nationwide a couple of years ago but each province did so in their own way.

In particular, although Toronto does not allow the sale of marijuana in the equivalent of off-licences, Nova Scotia does.

It will be fascinating to see what Deputy Commissioner Coxon thinks about how that works (or not).

Frank Desmond

Evergreen Rd

Cork City

Update law on cyclists’ visability

Have I got this right? In a recent debate between Cork City councillors, Ger Keohane (Ind) said: “Could I ask Cork City Council to encourage cyclists to use helmets and high visual jackets when cycling, in the interest of health and safety.”

Sinn Féin councillor Henry Cremin spoke in support. But Green Party councillor Colette Finn said: "I see it as victim blaming really. The only thing you are required to have as a cyclist is a light at night."

It’s the in thing, work an in-phrase into your conversation!

If a cyclist makes it more difficult for others to see him/her and fails to protect the head then he/she will be the victim but will also be to blame and will suffer the consequences. 

That said why not update the law to the effect that cyclists are not only required to have a light at night but to have high visibility vests and helmets at all times?

Brendan Casserly

Bishopstown

Cork

RTÉ Angelus bells must be silenced

In the wake of the publication of the mother and baby homes report, the nation yet again has been reminded of how the Catholic Church once dominated Irish society, and the horrific and unspeakable cruelty that they inflicted.

For many people the broadcasting of the Angelus by RTÉ is a reminder of this dark and oppressive era. It is time for RTÉ to muster up the courage, do what is right and remove this abomination from its broadcast schedule.

JP Daly

Hollyhill

Cork

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Trinity provost election dismay

It is good news and high time that Trinity will have its first woman provost but it is very disappointing to see that one of the highly qualified candidates, Prof Sarah Alyn Stacey, was eliminated from standing before the election by a ‘review committee’ Decision to deny top academic entry into race to become Trinity’s first female provost ‘draconian’ (Daniel McConnell, Irish Examiner, February 8).

It is perhaps no coincidence that Prof Alyn Stacey has been outspoken in relation to various issues, including the autonomy of Irish universities and TCD in particular. 

I further understand that two others, who had not publicly declared their candidacy, were also eliminated by this committee.

This reduced the number of candidates by 50%, from six to three, an unusually small number of candidates for the post.

In the past it was sufficient for candidates to gather the support of 12 nominators among the body of electors. It is cause for dismay that the well tried and proven system has for the first time in Trinity’s long history been undemocratically set aside.

While the remaining three are fine candidates, the electorate has been deprived of the diversity of a full slate of candidates. 

The choice of provost has been taken out of the hands of the academic electorate and usurped by a committee which gives administrators a decisive voice. 

This is another sign of the managerialism which has taken over our universities and contributed to the fall in international rankings. 

This trend is one which will support the status quo and prevent any new approaches or indeed a return to the golden age when Trinity was the equal to Oxford and Cambridge.

Dr Margret Fine-Davis

Department of Sociology

School of Social Sciences & Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin