I do not know who Maria Caruana is, but judging from her comments on teachers (TMID, 14 January) I have come to the conclusion that she must have a colossal grudge against teachers. Those same teachers who taught her and her offspring how to read and write.

In fact she is shooting from every direction in the hope of opening the score and shifting her own goalposts continually whenever she is under attack. But in her urge to belittle the teachers, she is scoring one autogoal after another.

We started with homework. I repeat: it is the parents themselves who want the teacher to give homework. Teachers have absolutely nothing to gain by giving homework, but apart from the fact that the only satisfaction a teacher gets is to see his students moving ahead, he also knows that if he fails to give any homework even once, he will certainly have problems, first with the parents, and then with his superiors for whom the parents are always right. But if some parents, for some reason or other, do not want their children to do any homework, all they have to do is to send a simple note to the teacher concerned and tell him exactly that. Simpler than that it cannot be.

Ms Caruana shot from another direction. She lost her argument about homework and wrote about holidays instead. According to her, teachers should not have more than two weeks’ holidays for Christmas. Ms Caruana said so. When I pointed out that teachers had 11 and not 15 holidays for Christmas, she told us that “common mortals have only 24 holidays during the whole year”. She never accepts defeat in spite of her autogoals. Read this. Ms. Caruana wrote it: The correction of homework by teachers in their free time is a myth. Then she continued without realising what a contradiction it was: She wrote: Teachers correct the homework in “their free” lessons while having coffee. Even having a cup of coffee in your free time disturbs Ms Caruana.

But what is exactly that Ms Caruana wants? Does she want to have as many holidays as teachers have or does she want to reduce the teachers’ holidays? Where does she work? And does she want schools to remain open till 5pm so that SHE may have more free time? Or does she expect others to look after HER children? Pupils, we have been told, are getting nervous and taking sedatives because of streaming and examinations. Imagine having these children at school till 5pm when they have to attend to the football nursery, ballet, singing, music, judo, painting... They can do without any catechism lessons and other religious practices. In fact I think that schools should be kept open even in summer so that parents can have a long and quiet holiday away from the many problems created by their own children. Then parents will have more time for coffee mornings, hairdressers, nutritionists, beautician, bingo, gym....

My advice: there is an acute shortage of teachers: why don’t you have a go?

Giov deMartino

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