R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

That's what president of the Barbados Secondary Teachers Union (BSTU), Mary Redman is demanding for all the country's teachers.

She also wants teachers to have a greater say in matters that affect them, and is calling on them to ensure there are systems that work for them "as a separate and special group entirely different from the rest of the public service".

"Our needs, our concerns must be addressed in a timely and respectful manner. We must be seen and treated as the professionals that we are. A teaching service [commission] is too long in the making; some see it as a pipe dream for us but we in the BSTU see it as something that must be achieved in the not too distant future," she said
at the start of the union's annual general meeting
at Queen's College, Husbands, St James, yesterday.

'Elitist groups'

Redman added there were "selected elitist groups" who did not see teachers as professionals but they were and should be treated accordingly.

"They don't see us fulfilling the prerequisites that they have set
in terms of the criteria that fulfils this role
of professionals.
Those persons have no appreciation of the myriad of different jobs that we
do on a daily basis on the completion of one day's work in a school environment.

"They have no understanding of how vital the cumulative effect of all those jobs are to the production of our so-called end product. That end product is a synthesised end product that is not compared to the 11-Plus,
is not compared at the end
of CSEC, is not compared at the end of CAPE but that end product is
a functional, productive, positive citizen way down the road in terms of the contribution that we make to the development of any society that we teachers operate in," she said.

Challenges

The president added that because what they
did was not "readily measurable" they suffered.

". . . Because so many
of us are forced to do
it in substandard and unhealthy conditions, because so much of what we do is determined
by forces and sources outside of us as a group,
and because we are compensated so poorly
we are not seen as a profession, we do not qualify to be seen
as professionals.

"So we as a group
have to take care of our concerns. We have
to redefine ourselves
as a group. We have
to set parameters and prerequisites towards
a new definition of a professional because teaching is a profession and we are professionals," Redman asserted. (DS)