The next INTO directive

Many people I speak with are asking fairly valid questions: what are the INTO doing right now? Why are they being so quiet?  Where is John Carr?  I was at a meeting a few nights ago and, perhaps, I have a possible answer.  Since the latest set of paycuts by our present shambles of a government, the INTO have been spending their time thinking of ways to send a message to Brian Cowen and co. to show that teachers aren’t happy.
There’s a couple of caveats to anything that anybody has suggested.  The first thing is we can’t break any laws or legislation.  The second thing is that we don’t want to adversely affect the children we teach.  The third is that we don’t want to annoy parents.  The fourth is that we already have a disastrous public image thanks to our holidays and the stupidity of certain teachers who can’t spell and those who claim it’s impossible to live on €95 per week after bills are paid.  The fifth, and possibly one thing we don’t really want to admit publicly is, we don’t really want to tarnish the image of our own local school.
I was at a principal and deputy principals’ INTO meeting and we were asked for our suggestions on an open forum.  Straight out, the most obvious of directives – to refuse to co-operate with WSEs, is a no-goer because it’s in legislation and some principals want WSEs.  Another idea to refuse to do after-schools activities was shot down due to caring for our children.  Not doing staff meetings also was a non-runner due to the law.  So, essentially, there was little left.  Ideas such as refusing to recycle were raised and were thankfully politely declined to the more interesting refusal of sending forms to the Department electronically and purposely sending them back on paper just to inconvenience them somewhat.
My ideas are silly.  I don’t know whether they would work or whether they would completely backfire.  Because there seems to always be reasons against stopping services, how about we start adding new and pointless services, whose only purpose is to show up the government’s lack of funding in primary education?  So here are my proposals for the INTO’s next directives to its members:
Idea 1: Every school must put up a poster at their entrance stating the following: “Our school is working for your children in spite of budget cutbacks.”
Idea 2: Every school must put a graphic on their web site slating government policy.
Idea 3: Every teacher, parent and child can wear a white ribbon in protest at government cutbacks in education
Idea 4: Schools should replace their green flag with a white flag.
Idea 5: All schools should send a letter to Batt O’Keeffe requesting a voluntary contribution of between €3 and €5 per week to help offset the cost of electricty and heating.
I realise these ideas may achieve nothing but no children would suffer as a result of these ideas; there would be not a lot of extra work for anybody to do;  also, the sheer silliness of the ideas might give us a bit of a decent public image.