Al Madina

A nation can never be considered developed without honoring its schoolteachers. So, when the late founder of Singapore realized this, he decided to reward his country’s schoolteachers just the same as his ministers. As a result, his country developed and became one of the leading countries in science, technology and even social ethics. All this happened due to the broad acceptance of the major role played by teachers in society.

It is unfortunate to witness a former teacher tweeting and publically judging our country’s teachers and calling them nothing but a group of failures. While I do admit that some of our teachers are indeed unqualified for the job, such teachers are in a minority and to call all our teachers failures is an unfair generalization. As in any profession, teachers, engineers, doctors and other professionals are made up of good and bad people.

I was once on live TV with the person who called our teachers failures. We were arguing about the Saudi Journalists Association (SJA) and the fact that it was not giving journalists what they actually deserve. His reaction was to start yelling and forcing his opinion, shouting: “What more do you want the SJA to give you?”

Not long after this incident, I learned that this man had resigned and admitted the SJAs shortcomings after having been one of its strongest defenders.

If employees only thought about the personal benefits they could reap from a job, corruption would be widespread. This also applies to the writing profession; having a job requires being faithful and is not about having a prestigious job title or working to achieve personal goals.

Here, I am proposing a massive overhaul and rethinking of the importance of teachers and their reflection on our society. Today, our country’s teachers are assigned 24 classes, expected to supervise students and to hand check their homework and exams. How much do we really hope to gain from all of this? Aren’t we adding unnecessary stress on our teachers by assigning them too many tasks to carry out?

I previously recommended that teachers should be considered for ministerial rank to encourage them to perform their best and to cultivate and retain talent in the teaching profession. I also believe it is crucial for the authorities to reduce the workload of teachers so that they can concentrate on teaching. I sometimes wonder how many people are really concerned about the country’s scientific as well as social development and are interested in bringing about a radical change.