ABSTRACT
Teachers' voice can be a seductive notion without due regard to the details of the way the Irish state is structured to relate to the main organised interests in Irish society. This describes unwitting embrace of vernacular forms of global neoliberalism in a process described by Ball as 'other to myself'. This chapter discusses teachers' salaries featured in the 1946 teachers' strike and subsequently as a mechanism for settling points of contention between the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) and government. It focuses on some groundbreaking work by the INTO on teacher status tied to notions of professionalism that was years in the making: 1969 INTO Submissions to the Tribunal on Teachers' Salaries; 1970 INTO Comments on HEA Report on Teacher Education; 1971 curriculum and 1988 INTO position paper on curriculum prescription. The chapter demonstrates teachers' politicisation marked by the practical politics of campaigning that of necessity had to be responsive to transformations in Ireland's political economy.
