Where were the picket lines, the banners, the spokesmen prepared to state their case and win public support? Not outside any of the 21 affected schools in our patch.

I've been on strike for better pay; through a long, hard winter when only a brazier burning scraps of scavenged wood kept us warm.

Being on strike meant being on picket duty every day, and through the frosty nights. I had a wife and baby son to support and only got strike pay if I manned the picket line.

Being on strike meant belief in your cause and making the argument at the gate to convince other workers not to cross the picket line. Being on strike meant making management realise we were in for the long haul.

Being on strike meant worrying about how the rent was going to get paid (we dreamt of a mortgage and home ownership in those days) and how we'd fill the food cupboard. Being on strike meant making a case for extra union funds and working hard to raise our own.

A strike for a cause in which there was real belief meant one out, all out, or at least those not on official strike refusing to cross their colleagues' picket line.

As it was, on Thursday, there were no pangs of conscience as there were no picket lines to cross. And there certainly wasn't all-out support as the majority of schools stayed open. It makes you wonder how passionate teachers are for their cause.

There's only one way to make the public aware of the way "Government has messed up education". Tell them. And you don't achieve that by staying at home, doing the garden, walking the dog or even organsing a teachers' drop-in.

Strikers today, tut, they don't know they're born.

Teachers probably have a very good case with a pay offer below the rate of inflation. Yes, it would appear that will be a pay cut. But you've got to make a case to the public in more convincing a manner than simply inconveniencing thousands of mums earning a lot less than £20,000 and who spend 47 weeks a year (if they're lucky) juggling work, kids and home.

No doubt I'll hear the "school's not a childminding service" argument. Well tell that to the mum who, excuse her, planned to go to work that day because she expected, quite reasonably, that her kids would be in school. I know some teachers who are mums who are also able to go to work because they anticipate their children will be attending school.

I'm not knocking the teachers' pay claim, but they have to better demonstrate a belief in it themselves.