existentialist
Tired and unemotional
I always have the feeling that pretty much all that the teaching unions would need to do to completely cripple the system would be to work to rule. So far as I understand it, the reason that they generally resort to the more traditional strike action is because a few days' strikes would be far less deleterious to the education of the kids than a longer campaign of work to rule.
If I'm right, then Gove would be making quite a big mistake in attempting to have an NUM-style showdown with teachers. The mining industry wasn't really built on goodwill on the part of the staff in the way that education is, and if push came to shove, teacher's wouldn't be doing a miners' strike, with flying pickets and all the rest of it: they'd just say "OK, well, if we haven't got any other option, we'll just do what we're paid to do". It would be hard to make the kind of public campaign against that action that Thatcher orchestrated against the miners - how on earth does a Government minister stamp out a refusal to mark work at home, or the closure of a school because teachers choose to withdraw from supervising playgrounds during their breaks? Sending in mounted policemen? Bussing supply teachers in under a hail of bricks?
Obviously, part of his onslaught on the terms and conditions of teachers' employment is to do with relaxing the rules that they'd work to, but it seems to me that, even if they met him on that half way, the whole education system would grind to a complete halt, given the amount of commitment and flexibility most teachers bring to the job. I am sure that most would not want to inflict that on their pupils, but there would come a point where they would be left with little option. I hope that, before that time comes, they've got a good PR operation going and can get parents and the general population onside.
And I would really hope that it was a battle that Gove lost in spades. Because enough damage has been done to education through political interference since Thatcher's day as it is, and very much more risks turning our schools - and the education of our children - into even more of a disaster that would, I suspect, make us the laughing stock of much of the world.
He obviously didn't get 'work to rule'.
