It is not about teachers, but about the children

Have you ever sat down and asked yourselves why some things never change? Well, if there is one segment of our society that remains steadfast in its ways it has got to be teachers. Having been one for 12 years and dedicated myself to setting up an independent house union in an independent school as a way of deliberately splitting from the MUT, I know exactly what teachers think and want to say.

To start with, there are very good teachers: dedicated, focused, hard-working and concerned with their pupils’ achievements, doing work beyond their call of duty. But there are a whole lot of others who are not. Some are more concerned with their ‘tax-free’ private lessons or their after-work ‘activities’, believing they are owed privileges and being adamantly opposed to any suggestion of reform.

Now, we happen to be living in an extraordinary time, a time which has left our schools with challenges like never before, and with online teaching being no substitute for the real teacher experience. Worst of all, in this enforced ‘gap year’ of sorts, we are seeing our children having to endure a great educational deficit.

They have difficulty in catching up or finalising their studies, and the idea of seeing their work checked and reviewed has become a veritable nightmare with all the protocols in place.

Those children with learning problems are the ones which have a serious test ahead of them. Catching up with their education will be a daunting task. In the face of all this, we have the uncompromising MUT and the minuscule UPE who defend their members’ rights at all costs.

So when Prime Minister Robert Abela suggested something about moving the carnival holidays, the MUT kicked back, unsurprisingly. No – they said – there is a collective agreement and that was that.

Our governments have been traditionally wary not to ruffle the feathers of the MUT. But enough is really enough. Malta has a scholastic year which leaves teachers with a decent number of long holidays: mid-terms, Christmas, Easter and Summer, sometimes too long for anyone’s liking. Even when there is a schedule for schooling or contact hours, schools inform students that they have another free day so that teachers have staff-development days. And this kept happening even in the pandemic.

The MUT refutes flexibility and has declared that it will not be coerced in accepting that teachers can work out of their comfort zone in this traumatic period. And even in the pandemic, when the whole country is at war, when businesses are floundering, when the economy is falling apart, the MUT finds refuge in their collective agreements.

Not only that, but when it comes to online teaching, the MUT agreed with its members that teachers at secondary school level need not have their faces appearing online, and many members simply had recorded lessons not interactive ones.

The majority of private schools, in comparison with State schools, rose to the occasion and provided sterling online service. But instead of reaching out in the crisis, the MUT was characteristically archaic and negative. The argument here is that the most important element in this discussion is the child, the teenager and the adolescent, who have an education to follow. And it is their right to have the best education possible.

Just as doctors and nurses put their lives at risk to save patients’ lives, the MUT can try to make things easier and more manageable.

I am not sure how many of the MUT’s council members have children, but they do need to understand that the priority here is the education of our children, and that means being understanding in having to sacrifice some holidays and time off.

Out of the school milieu, anyone with a small business is working hard to keep afloat. In the schooling world, teacher’s wages are guaranteed in both State, church and independent. But in the world out there, we have no guarantees.

Indeed, in private schools, everyone is expected to pay their school bills in full. Can the MUT understand the sacrifices parents have to endure to keep their own incomes while paying for their children’s education? We need to understand the magnitude of the crisis we face and the obligations we have.

Seeing teachers in France protest for higher wages during a pandemic is perhaps a reminder of why teachers should have a well-balanced view of the world around them.

Even Robert Abela should take bold decisions in the interest of our children. Everyone has made sacrifices: from highly-paid pilots, to laid-off hotel workers, the self-employed and even journalists. It is now time to take the bull by the horns, and stop the mollycoddling of intransigent stakeholders. Our children need our full attention; the MUT, some tough reckoning.

Drugs court

The other day the son of EU Commissioner Helena Dalli was condemned to three months’ imprisonment for an incident that occurred years ago when he was 18. That was eight years ago.

There has been a general outcry that the court cannot take ages to mete out justice. And then again, the issue was that the possession of six pills – a drug sharing incident by all appearances – within 100m from a club, could only be considered at law as a trafficking incident, therefore preventing the user from being referred to a drugs court where jail could be avoided.

The question is, if we know that we have this anomaly in the law; if we know that the law is wrong, or that we have the wrong formulated approach to a problem, why don’t we change them?

With all the commissions and law commissioners, lawyers’ associations, politicians, media pundits, political parties and practitioners, it seems nobody has had the time to point out these incongruities in the law, formulated by lawmakers who could not see well enough into the future. Of course, Franco Debono did...

The result has been that the moment we start the big debate on these drug laws only happens when it is the son of a well-known personality. Helena Dalli must have been annoyed at being dragged into the debate, but then again she should be savvy enough to realise that no press can ignore mentioning her. Indeed, she could appreciate that her standing in the whole affair could lead to some proper change in the drug laws.

Attempts by some media to question her political position after the court sentence were puerile and ill-conceived. Helena Dalli should not be held responsible for the actions of younger members of her family. I do not want to condone drug-taking in anyway, but it is clear that six ecstasy pills exchanged right before a party is, to put it mildly, questionable ‘fun’; illegal perhaps, but not an act of trafficking, surely.

Yet had it been 18-year-old Johnnie Borg from Ħal-Qormi, certainly enough the incident would have gone unnoticed and nobodywould batted an eyelid. No one  would have expressed an opinion.

So let us learn a lesson that our laws need continual addressing and changes. And there seems to be a serious lacuna in this field. Only when it hits us in the face, do we realise this.