Dear Editor,

My letter of May 5, “Teachers fail, not students”, has ruffled more than a few feathers among teachers and others who supported the move to strike. I have received a number of email responses that make me happy that words can’t kill. My deduction is that there is quite a bit of anger and bitterness being felt by our nation’s teachers. I therefore use this very medium to sympathise with the teachers and to make it clear whose side I’m on.

I do not act as an apologist for the government. It is sad that teachers can’t get what is due to them and the government should leave no stone unturned in its efforts to come up with a better deal for them. I strongly believe, however, that two wrongs cannot make a right and that the teachers should never seek to shut down the education system to the detriment of our children and then boast about it on national television as if it were some great epoch-making event.

I have been trading emails with one teacher who was obviously hurt by my letter, and during our discourse I was made aware of a number of other variables that might be at play in this saga. Many teachers took the government’s commitment to them in good faith and had no doubts that the government would deliver. According to the teacher with whom I traded emails, many of them are now in debt as they made financial decisions contingent on the money owed to them.Though we are told never to count our chickens before they hatch, teachers were depending on the government to honour its commitment, and rightly so.

In light of this, I call on the government to guarantee one to three per cent loans for all teachers who desire to do some debt consolidation, or teachers who are in need of their money right now. Our banks which have made mega profits should jump at the chance to make their contribution to the nation’s teachers by facilitating these loans with little or no red tape. The government should prepare letters of undertaking for every teacher with the amount that is owed to them, and this letter of undertaking should be the only security that the teacher would need to secure the loan. Though this might not be ideal for all the parties involved, it’s something to think about.

Pastor Daren Larmond

Optilearn1@yahoo.com