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| India-Pakistan |
| Wayward teachers |
| 2015-10-06 |
| [DAWN] IN the last few days, I had occasion to witness the work of government teachers at three schools in Larkana district. At a boys' primary school, a government teacher in connivance with a local landowner withdrew government funds from a school bank account; he gave Rs3,000 to the landowner as a bribe, another Rs3,000 to the education department clerk to process the approvals and kept the remaining Rs5,000 himself. These are funds allocated by the government to be spent on the school building and facilities. The school in question is located in an agricultural field where there is no electric grid; the Rs11,000 the teacher embezzled would have been enough to pay for one solar panel and two pedestal fans for the two-room school. At 9am on a school day at a boys' high school, about 70 students were roaming the corridors, playing games on their mobile phones or sitting chatting in the playground. Inside the headmaster's office, seven male teachers, all in their 40s and 50s, sat before plates piled high with sweets while the school's peons served them several cups of tea. When asked about the timetable and which teacher was due in which classroom, the headmaster, whose monthly salary is Rs105,000, looked up with a blank expression, as if the most incomprehensible and irrelevant question had been asked. A few days later at the sam e school, the same group of teachers arrived in the morning, marked their attendance and then headed out together leaving dozens of students in unsupervised classrooms. Where were they headed? A meeting of the teachers' union that could not be missed and was far more important than teaching. At a girls' primary school, an experienced middle-aged teacher was cross about having been marked absent when she didn't show up. After all, she demanded, why couldn't she just be marked as on casual leave? At the same school, three teachers bribed or used political pressure to be transferred elsewhere because here they were being asked to show up on time every morning. The penalty for all these acts of gross misconduct and negligence: nothing. To the contrary, taxpayers' money is being drained on these incompetent and corrupt individuals who receive salaries ranging from Rs25,000 to over Rs100,000 compared with the Rs4,000 to Rs7,000 non-profit organizations pay teachers in the same area. These low-paid teachers are punctual, regular and committed to their students. Where does the difference lie? First, these government teachers have been bred in a system of zero accountability where everyone from an office peon at the education department to supervisors and officers are accustomed to receiving and giving illicit payments and political favours to avoid duties. Second, years of this corrupt system has led to a complete breakdown in the collective conscience of |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Coming to an unionized school district near you! If it isn't already there. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2015-10-06 00:46 |