Heriot-Watt University is naturally peeved at losing Moray House Institute of Education in 1998. Perhaps the less than amicable divorce was in vice-principal Charles Brown’s mind when he spoke at a graduation ceremony for Moray House students last Saturday.
“The Chinese curse ‘may you live in interesting times’ is especially relevant and inevitably there are times when frustration boils over,” Brown said. This was a reference to the funding problems of higher education but he could have been forgiven for thinking of something else entirely.
Moray House and other teacher training centres have been facing the financial furies of late and perhaps Brown was reminding them not to become obsessed with it when he declared: “Successful teachers are those who see their jobs as a profession and in many cases a vocation, rather than solely a mechanism for paying the mortgage and household expenses.”
For “teachers” read “college principals”?
