Hasten to Meet the Teachers' Demands

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The teachers’ demands are just, because they have suffered a great deal from financial hardship over long years. Teachers’ salaries have always been insufficient, and a teacher can barely cover his monthly expenses. Teachers support families, their children attend universities, costing a great deal of money, and they are human beings like everyone else — the economic strain around their necks ought to be loosened. We see teachers spending with the utmost caution, even on groceries and their daily bread, we see their outward appearance, and we know full well that the suit a teacher wears has gone many years without renewal. We also see how pupils grow insolent toward the teacher, and how some parents constantly side with their unruly children. Many insults are heaped upon the teacher, the most significant being the shrinking of his social standing.

The continuation of the teachers’ strike harms pupils at every level, but teachers are not responsible for this. The first and last party responsible for the harm done to pupils and schools is the head of the self-rule authority and his government, which does not appear to be governed by wisdom. Had the self-rule authority worked, from the very beginning, to reorganize expenditures and sought guidance from experts in financial management, it would have secured the funds needed to raise teachers’ salaries to a good, acceptable level. There are eloquent voices who place the responsibility for the harm done to pupils on the teachers, and this is unjust and unfair, reflecting a lack of understanding of the corrupt financial management practiced in our lands. There is enough money, if we decide to establish the scale of justice and attend to the principles of proper distribution. The problem is that those who plunder the Palestinian people’s money do not want to give up their financial gains and personal privileges. Let them live, and let the Palestinian people go to hell afterward.

The teacher suffers great injustice, even though he performs his duty well and does not roam the streets during working hours as thousands of employees who earn salaries higher than his do. If we were to rank those working within the Palestinian Authority, we would place teachers at the top of the list, followed by those working in the health sector. We ought to search for those who do not work and strip them of their positions to free up money for those who do work. I have previously pointed, in another article, to the sites of money-squandering. Who is better: the member of the Palestinian National Council who voted in favor of recognizing the Zionist entity and coordinates security matters with it, or the teacher who teaches pupils the foundations and principles of national belonging? There are those who betrayed the homeland and the citizen who have no right to public employment, because they destroy, and there are those who belong to the homeland and who build. We ought to reward those who build at the expense of those who destroy.

It is our duty, as a people, to stand with the teacher, to strengthen and support him, and to press for justice on his behalf, and this is also the task of pupils, whose families must teach them that respecting the teacher is a human, national, and moral duty.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “الإسراع بتلبية مطالب المعلمين” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.