School

[Forgotten]

As I'm sure is the case at most schools (and hospitals etc) support staff (the cleaners, garderners) have a seperate room to go to at their lunch breaks, while the teachers go to the staffroom. The relationship between the support staff and the teachers has developed to be purely superficial.

so.
I have a few questions:

1) Is it important that they should sit together?

2) What reasons would the school supply for them having different tea rooms?

3) Would support staff want to sit with teachers and visa versa?

Any other thoughts on the topic?

thanks
=]

[RedAnarchist]

Is it going to make any real difference if they share a room or not? Maybe it might make the relationship a little more substantial, but its not like them having seperate rooms is going to split them and make one group feel better than the other.

[Patchd]

Well, I'm mates with the support staff in my school/college. They're great guys, and they do feel left out of the school staff community.

They have their own dusty little hut, which they share with their tools, they don't get invited to staff parties (organised by the school governors etc...), and they get paid a lot less than the teachers.

I think they should be allowed to mix better with the teachers, it would increase workers solidarity within the school, instead of create a mindless split between teacher and caretaker.

[Dr Mindbender]

we only have one canteen/social area in my workplace. I dont think its had any great impact on the level of class conciousness, even though the upper management are too snobbish to eat with the rest of us.

[bolshevik butcher]

There's one staffroom for all at my school..Generally the teachers and staff seem to have quite an amicable relationship, I remember when the staff were on strike some of the teachers (and students), refused to cross the picket line, well the two old lefty warhorses. It is true I think that in a lot of work places a feeling of superioroty emerges among certain layers of workers and as socialists fighting for a united working class movement this is a serious issue. For instance why are teachers in an entirely different union from all the support staff? In Britain UNISON unionises practically all public service sector workers except teachers. This is partly due to a certain snobbery among the teaching proffession.

[Forgotten]

What reason would the governing body use as an excuse for the seperation?

[JazzRemington]

Keeping children separate from one another would only reinforce the idea that they are different. Upper, middle, and lower class kids need to be able to socialize together. I think Fransisco Ferrer had this idea around the time before the Spanish Revolution.