Friday, September 17, 2010
LOCAL
Page 5
By Hussain Al-Qatari
R
ecent incidents of political and sectarian tension in the country could negatively impact students’ behavior, fear public school teachers. As the Ministry of Education promises to adopt a new program that will fight sectarianism in schools, teachers expressed their doubt with regards to the program’s capabilities. The details of the program, which were published in a local daily this week, promise a comprehensive agenda that will encourage goodwill and implement positive values like tolerance and understanding of cultural differences. Despite the optimistic plan, 43year-old teacher Nora (not her real name) says she has her doubts, “In order to create awareness, you need to invest quite a lot of effort and money in teachers and educators, as well as social workers and school psychologists. I don’t see any investment or training going on. Throughout the summer, all teachers were on vacation. Most of them were probably out of the country. The ministry’s promises, I fear, will not see the light,” said the sociology high school teacher from Mubarak Al-Kabeer. Not to doubt the teachers’ efforts in the classroom, Nora says that there are a lot of teachers who try very hard to bring out the best of the classroom environment. This is extremely difficult due to the relatively short time students spend in school. “Whatever effort teachers put into controlling students’ behavior inside or outside the classroom is sadly unnoticed by the ministry officials. Sometimes it is not even encouraged,” she said. Eliminating sectarianism in schools is not possible, as most parents don’t take teachers seriously, “Many parents are arrogant and
Kuwait’s public school teachers get into trouble for ‘sticking their nose where it doesn’t belong’ don’t think it is the business of the teacher to speak about anything other than the subject their children study in the classroom,” she said. Giving the example of an incident that happened to her, she said, “I was once interrogated by my superiors because a 17year-old student confided in me and told me that she is in love with a boy who wants to propose to her although he is from a different sect. Appreciating her trust in me, I didn’t want to reprimand the girl. I told her that she should think of her future first in terms of education and career before thinking of marriage, and that if God wills, she will get married regardless of the difference of sect and background,” she narrated. “I told her that she should focus on her studies and think of what she wants to do after graduation. The next day, her parents spoke to the school management and filed a complaint claiming that I encouraged the girl to start a relationship with a boy. Encouraging her to study and focus on her future went unnoticed; they were upset because I told the girl that background and sectarian differences don’t matter,” she said.
Furthering on Nora’s point, Dalal, 27, an English language teacher at a primary school for boys said that teachers in Kuwait’s public schools especially seem to be always getting in trouble for “sticking their nose where it doesn’t belong,” which is what many parents and school officials call teachers’ interference with students’ behavior. Talking about her experience, she narrates, “I had a student who behaved very improperly in my class. He was very disrespectful to his colleagues and to me. After one incident, I punished him by assigning him to write a letter apologizing for being disrespectful, and to read it in front of the class. I also referred him to the school principal, who was very supportive of the idea of his public apology.” The next day, the boy didn’t show up. Instead, his angry mother came to the principal’s office and demanded that the teacher apologizes, she explained. Her son’s punishment was public humiliation, she claimed, and her son is not going to apologize to anyone because she believed he did nothing wrong, “You see, we try to correct
what we see to be wrong, but sometimes there just isn’t enough support, or no support at all. The opposite of that, actually,” she said. Dalal also added that the schedule is very tight, “We are required to follow the syllabus, teach the students certain skills, spot talents and try to hone them, try to find the negative to fight it, all of this keeping track of the syllabus and the daily lesson assigned by the ministry. This all needs to be done in less than an hour, in a classroom with about thirty students. It’s difficult to try to juggle all that and still be discouraged by parents,” she noted. Mishal, a teacher in a boys’ middle school, says that sectarian tension translates into bullying in the school yard, “Some parents understand when we punish their kids for getting into fights but the majority have the sectarian ideologies themselves,” he said. “They wouldn’t recognize their kids’ mistake in bullying someone for belonging to a different sect, tribe or background. This is because they speak ill of those who are different from them.”