Sunday 4 November 2007

Heroes

I am linking to a post on the Digital Photography Review site.

The thread is headed:

Rob Galbraith is my hero
So who is Rob Galbraith and what has he done?

Rob is a well-known photographer who drew attention to a problem with one of Canon's new cameras and is credited with getting Canon to recall the cameras for fixing.

The first reply in the thread says:

Heros are police, firefighters, teachers, social workers etc
Controversy follows. Someone else wrote:
What is so heroic about being a teacher?
The teachers on the thread got very upset with that one. Later in the thread someone writes about the military:
The HEROES of the war are those who willingly put themselves in harms way to save a comrade. IE, one who would willing fall on a grenade to save his comrades.
That sounds more like heroism to me. But the question I ask is this: why are social workers and teachers often described as heroes? I don't think that their work makes them heroic. They may do a difficult job, but so do millions of other people. Why aren't they heroes?

I think I know why.

Social workers and teachers are usually unionised public-sector employees and it suits their narrative as tax-consumers to portray themselves as heroes.

If social work and teaching had continued (as should have been the case) to be solely private sector occupations I bet it would never have occurred to them to have claimed heroic status.

1 comment:

David Farrer said...

Comments made on previous template:

Andrew Duffin
"it suits their narrative as tax-consumers to portray themselves as heroes."

It helps them in their claim to be "key workers", too, thus becoming entitled - in their view - to subsidised housing at everyone else's expense.
5 December 2007, 20:02:53 GMT – Like – Reply

Anon A Moss
Did you see the Herald on Saturday?

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1807186.0.0.php

"Only three of Scotland's 53,000 primary and secondary teachers were sacked on grounds of incompetence last year despite pledges by previous ministers to clamp down on poor performance in the classroom.

According to figures obtained by The Herald under Freedom of Information legislation, the only local authorities to remove a teacher last year because of poor performance were East Ayrshire, Glasgow and Perth and Kinross. Only one teacher in Scotland was demoted because of poor teaching - again in Glasgow.

However, a Herald investigation last year revealed that since 2000 only nine teachers had been sacked across Scotland - seven of them in Glasgow."

This is the best bit!

"However, Bruce Robertson, president of the Association of Directors of Education Scotland defended the approach taken by local authorities and said that most incompetent teachers left the profession voluntarily."

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Yeah well what would you expect a hero to do?
4 November 2007, 14:40:46 GMT