The holidays Joseph Zarb mentioned in his letter Better Working Conditions For Teachers (April 29) are all there and they are exigencies of the profession. His insipid provincial sarcasm makes him myopic to some facts which have to be posited.

First and foremost these holidays, which he and others begrudge the teaching profession, are not even considered to be adequate incentives on their own for them to take up teaching as a profession. There were not enough graduate teachers this year to fill even the most urgent educational needs out of thousands of graduands. Secondly, in spite of the holidays which Mr Zarb himself enjoyed as a student, his pedagogues were unselfishly proficient enough in their job to provide him the tools he is now using. Thirdly, the "historic" 2007 agreement was nothing more than a forceful ramming down the throat of a then more than over-complacent MUT council.

Having said all that, it is most worthwhile to note that in spite of the reforms and blah-blah that they carried out with great expense to the tax payer, the last two Nationalist education ministers were not returned. In fact, the statement issued this time round by the ministry specifically recognises the professionalism of teachers, a far cry from the inciting under-tones of statements issued in the past whenever there was a dispute with the MUT.

A list of coincidences occurred prior to elections held during the past 40 years (and that is a long time). Whenever the teachers were not contented, the party in power lost. In fact, a majority of 15k dwindling to a few hundreds cannot be really considered as a PN victory. Teachers influence potential new non-committed voters. The Maltese socialist rulers of the 1970s and 1980s recognised this fact.

During a development course (organised by the department) for teachers of Social Studies in secondary schools at that time, we were advised to "prepare future citizens to live in a socialist society". This did not only imply that citizens were to accept and comply with such a rule but also that they had to first and foremost opt for it by their votes. Vote Socialist. I think that politicians do take the influence that teachers are capable of exerting seriously.

Pċielaq in the streets are just that, to the shame of our profession, of course. But then, you cannot win them all.