CAIRO – Teachers have betrayed millions of parents and their children by going on strike and refusing to re-enter the classrooms until the Government increases their monthly salaries. Teachers who claim that their salaries are too small to live on, because everything has become so expensive, have been booed and jeered by Egyptian families. Several studies conducted by family welfare experts have sadly discovered that Egyptian families spend no less than LE18 billion on private tuition every year. In sympathising with them, these experts say that, even if these poor Egyptian parents don't have any money, they have to pay for private tuition for their children so the teachers don't persecute them. Because their psychological warfare on the schoolchildren has been successful, the nation's teachers have decided to use the same techniques against the Government to compel it to increase their wages, monthly bonuses and annual allowances. Any pupil who refuses to have private tuition for financial reasons or otherwise, is abused by his teachers and treated like an outcast, who should be sidelined during the lessons in school. To save their child from this cowardly humiliation, the parents have to give in to the teachers' outrageous pressure. As Egyptians say, ‘Money helps thaw metal', making the teacher who is so grim in the morning at school relax in the child's home in the afternoon. The family's dilemma is almost unimaginable if they have two or more children to educate. The private tutors start invading the family home minutes after the end of the school day. Popular, charismatic teachers return home at midnight or even later. A private tutor is jeered by colleagues if he/she earns less than LE400 per day from giving private lessons. The private tutor's pickings are directly proportional to his/her popularity and efficiency. Having returned home in the wee hours of the morning, the teachers turn up in the classroom the next morning, absolutely ‘knackered'. They explain nothing to the children, as they want to save their energy and enthusiasm for their lucrative business at the end of the school day. Although they are regular visitors to the child's home and witnesses of the parents' economic plight, the private tutors cruelly ignore the family's financial problems. It's amazing that poor families, who cannot promise to put food on the table for their children's next meal, do not protest at the greed of private tutors and the expense. Despite the huge sums Egyptian families spend on their children's education, the latter often find themselves unemployed after graduating. Curiously, parents accept having to suffer terribly, if only to finance the education of the unemployed of tomorrow. If teachers claim that demonstrating for higher wages is their statutory right, other civil servants have been doing the same thing: staging mass demonstrations for better wages to pay for their children's private tuition. The Minister of Education's meek apology for not being able to give them a pay rise has not touched the protesters' hearts. They insist that the Minister of Education must go, claiming that he is turning a deaf ear to their plea. Nor has an emotional appeal from the Prime Minister, who told the teachers to return to the classroom because of the Government's financial crisis, stopped the teachers from continuing their protests. The irony is that the striking teachers still have time to give private lessons! They should be aware of the limits of the parents' patience. Their visits to the children at home may soon become unwelcome. Many families across the country are thinking of collaring the striking teachers at the school gate and forcing them to enter the classroom and start teaching.
