The teaching strike

The strike by teachers is becoming increasingly nasty with unions calling on parents to keep their children at home and the Balearic government urging them to take them to class. I don´t like children being used as pawns in an industrial dispute. This should be a straight fight between teachers and the government;parents and students are just innocent bystanders who obviously would like to see the dispute resolved as quickly as possible. There is no sign that the strike will end soon;both sides are miles apart on the three language system. I don´t think English is really the problem, I suspect that teachers  do not want more Spanish taught as opposed to Catalan. I saw one school placard yesterday which stated “We love English.” Sooner or later there has to be some compromise deal. I think the government can be accused of trying to introduce the system too quickly and the teachers are perhaps  guilty of being rather shortsighted. But the stakes in this dispute are sky-high; we are talking about the education of  the future generations of these islands.  In some cases students have not had any proper classes since June. This is an outrageous state of affairs. The Balearic government says that they had the support of the electorate who voted for the three language system at the last local elections.  Perhaps the government should let parents have their say and organise a vote on this issue. Then there can be only one winner and one loser.