TEACHERS are blinkered, opinionated individuals with little or no hands-on knowledge of wildlife management or country sports - so says the pro-fox hunting lobby.
Countryman’s Weekly, a leading field sports magazine, says teachers are a “soft touch” for animal rights propagandists and “little better than the tabloid hacks of this world”.
Vic Gardner, the author of the piece, said: “Teachers only know about life from what they learn from books. The single-issue animal rights propagandists see teachers and Liberal Democrats as the softest touches.”
Mr Gardner’s comments appeared in an interview with Mary Eames, education co-ordinator for the Countryside Alliance, which has formed a new education wing, and is hoping to fund a schools campaign, aimed at encouraging more children to take up hunting and other field sports.
She said: “Teachers perpetuate the myth that animals are like those in the Farthing Wood books or Disney films.”
And even worse for the country lobby, they are quite likely to come across the enemy on their own territory.
Teachers make up 10 per cent - the largest occupational group - of the 125,000-strong Ramblers Association, which this week was promised the legal right to roam over four million acres of mountains, moors, heaths and downs.
