Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

That is not the whole story. There is a trend in the modern world to downgrade arts subjects, which is true in colleges. Education is being geared at third level, something which is probably seeping down to second level, towards providing industry with the sort of workers that it needs rather than developing the intellectual capacity of human beings regardless of their age or level of understanding of the world around them.

This goes to the heart of the worries the ASTI has about the junior cycle curriculum. Its members are being asked to accept what is being shoved down their throats by the Lansdowne Road agreement, even though as a group of workers they rejected it. They are now being threatened with redundancy for taking a stance in defence of education, among other things, because they do not believe that they should correct their students' papers. They also have issues with things like the downgrading of history and the arts in general. On the one hand, the response is to say we are relaxing the rules around the teaching of history but on the other, we are taking a big stick, beating the teachers and possibly making them redundant if they do not agree with the policy.

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