Bermuda's teachers began their current contract dispute with a fair amount of public sympathy.

There are many in the community who recognise that teaching is a hard job, requiring dedication and passion. And many also recognise that the conditions in which teachers work are often less than ideal.

The people who should be the most sympathetic towards teachers are parents, their partners in the upbringing and education of their children. And it is likely that parents were among their greatest supporters.

That is what makes the current strike so difficult to understand. Striking without notice, and now striking in spite of the fact that the dispute has been referred to arbitration is causing massive inconvenience and expense for parents throughout the community.

Parents are being forced to take time off work, to pay day care specialists or to take their children to work while the strike continues.

And with each day that the strike lasts, it is inevitable that parents will become less and less sympathetic to the teachers' cause, especially when parents in the Government system tend to be less well off than those with children in private schools. In other words, the parents who can least afford the inconvenience are the ones who are having to shoulder it.

This strike will probably drive more parents into the private system next year as well as they refuse to countenance the disruption to their children's education. Those parents who do jump will be those who actually care about education and schools; the same ones who go to PTA meetings, prize-givings and parent-teacher conferences.

Presumably the parents who do not care about their children's education will leave their children in Government schools, and in another year or so teachers will be complaining that parents are not doing their part in raising their children.

Ultimately, the children suffer the most. They are missing valuable school time. They are getting the message that if their teachers don't turn up at school then they don't have to either.

This is not to say that the teachers do not have a case. They do. Teachers, although they are paid comparably with many in the private sector, can argue that they are underpaid compared to other parts of the Civil Service.

Morale in the profession needs to improve, with many teachers going into other professions after a few years in the classroom.

Some schools desperately need improvements to their physical plant, while mainstreaming - whether you agree with it or not - and modern approaches to discipline (children are not badly behaved, they are behaviourally challenged) create challenges for teachers who do not get the support from para-professionals and teachers aides that they need.

But having failed to reach agreement with the Ministry of Education on pay, the teachers can make their case to an independent arbitrator. If their case is strong, then they stand a good chance of getting most of what they are seeking, even recognising the weak state of Government finances.

And in the meantime, they should be pushing for a broad-based Commission of Inquiry into education to look not only at pay and benefits for teachers, but everything concerned with the subject.

But they will achieve neither, and get very little public support, as long as they stay on strike.