Dialogue: Teachers too hard on working mums

By LOUISA HERD*

Last Tuesday, my youngest son had a school trip to the Goat Island marine reserve near Warkworth. On Thursday, he attended a rural schools cricket match. Great, eh? Isn't it marvellous the way our schools encourage budding Wade Doaks and Stephen Flemings?

Then there was the previous week's rural schools swimming sports when junior Trent Brays got their chance at glory, not to mention March 1 when the high school lot went on strike and demonstrated industrial unrest first-hand to their fledgling politicos.

Of course, the common denominator underpinning all these valuable educational experiences is that for each of these events I had to beg some leave from work.

I don't give a toss about teachers' reasons for striking, running endless trips, sports days or other functions which inevitably seem to entail my having to grovel to the boss for yet another day off.

I'm not interested in their attempts to justify another session with all the substance of intellectual candy-floss, hours wasted pandering to the nationwide cult of sport, or their meaningful dialogue with an uncaring Government.

No, I simply wonder more and more just which asteroid they all fell off.

Planet Pedagogue 2002 is obviously a 1950s time-warp, where mummy stays home to bake lamingtons for the school fund-raiser.

She does not have a job. God forbid she should not be available at the drop of a hat to chauffeur kiddies to the zoo. Heaven forbid that mummy is so selfishly tied up in her own work that she can't stand around on a windswept beach in a strong south-westerly for four hours to cheer on the tiny cross-country stars of tomorrow.

That a mother should put her job before the educational welfare of her children? Tut tut.

Naturally, none of the above applies to teacher mummies, who seem to comprise the bulk of the profession, judging by school staff rolls full of Mrs This and Mrs That. These women certainly don't view themselves as latter-day hausfrau, with no aim in life other than to create perfect frosting on a cake-stall lemon slice and keep the car clean for the interschool hockey day.

Instead, Mrs Thingummy the career teacher issues her photocopied diktat and ladies, we've to gird ourselves for the leap into the tutorial breach, armed with Anzac biscuits and two spare seats (with seat-belts) for the Smith twins to go on the class outing to the fire station - and to pot with our own work responsibilities.

Stockbroker or secretary, farmhand or florist, you must be prepared at all times to flag your job for the sake of the Room 2 trip. But what happens to working mothers who can't take the day off? What happens, teachers, to those of us in the real world, when we have a sick child or fall ill ourselves and we have no leave left?

When we've used it all up during the school holidays - now, there's an exercise in duck-shuffling if ever there was one - then you hit us with a union meeting during term-time, a strike, a trip, a couple of sports days, plus that insidious curse of the working mum, the teacher-only day?

Here we are, still in the first term, and so far I've lost five days from my annual leave entitlement. If my husband's night shifts don't coincide with the Easter break, I'm toast. Two weeks up the spout and we're not even halfway through the year. I'd better not get crook, and as for a holiday, don't make me laugh.

I'm not asking to stop the trips and ban the sports days, but do we need so many?

It would be nice if the teaching profession, full, one would think, of people who espouse the ideals of equality, could wake up to the fact that we are not living in a Brady Bunch show and that Mummy has to work nowadays.

Do something to show me that I'm wrong in surmising you just want a cruisy day out of the classroom, a day where mothers look after their own children in school time and all you have to do is swan around carrying a clipboard.

Likewise, I understand the profession's frustrations and try to feel sympathetic to the teachers' cause when they strike.

Teaching is undervalued. I can see they have an unfair burden of paperwork which would sap the enthusiasm of the keenest young graduate.

But I'm afraid that my patience (and that of my employer) is running out. I'm on the brink of doing a Marie Antoinette. You can all eat cake - cake-stall cake - and you can darned well bake it yourselves.

* Louisa Herd is a Wellsford farm worker.

* Sandy Burgham returns in two weeks.