Many in my generation who are now in their fifties still fondly remember their teachers, particularly at primary school. These teachers were remarkable for their devotion to duty and an impressive combination of strictness and kindness. I personally recall how our Arabic-language teacher used to take us to visit sick classmates. For us, schoolteachers were role models, like our own parents. Sadly, times have changed. These reminiscences were revisited last week, as I read about a local teacher who cut the hair of two fifth-grade girls in her classroom at a mixed school in the famous Upper Egyptian city of Luxor. The science teacher said in press interviews she had punished the two girls because they attended her class with their hair uncovered, despite her earlier order that all girls should wear the hijab, the headscarf worn by Muslim women. The teacher herself wears the niqab, or black full-face veil, which has only two eye slits. What she did has understandably made headlines, with the fathers of the two punished girls reporting the incident to the authorities. The teacher has been probed and transferred to an administrative post. In an apparent bid to mitigate the dismay caused by her behaviour, the teacher said the incident was meant as a joke and even a face-saver, after one of her pupils challenged her to make good on her threat to cut the hair of the uncovered girls. “The pupil produced a pair of scissors from his bag and gave them to me. I only cut off two centimetres of their hair," the teacher said, blaming the “sensationalist" media for allegedly blowing the incident out of all proportion. The deputy head of the school reportedly mocked the two girls when they showed up in tears at his office to complain about what the teacher had done. The incident has embarrassed the Ministry of Education, which denies that donning the hijab is mandatory in schools. What struck my attention was that the teacher had been allowed to do her job while wearing the niqab, making it hard for her to communicate with schoolchildren. Teaching is based on eye-to-eye communication. How much a pupil, especially in the early stages of education, can gain from schooling, greatly depends on the teacher's communicability. For sure, the Luxor schoolteacher is not the only female instructor to wear the niqab. Now the garb has been spreading with the rise of Islamists in Egypt, following the revolt that toppled Hosni Mubarak more than 18 months ago. To be fair, the niqab has become increasingly popular among Egypt's Muslim women in recent years, despite assertions from moderate clerics that the attire is not obligatory in Islam. The costume, which originated in the Arabian Peninsula, was in recent years at the centre of several lawsuits filed by female students and employees, barred from State institutions for wearing the full-face veil. With Islamists now in command, women are obviously being encouraged to wear this garb, among other religious insignia. Still, education should not be left for Islamists to reshape. This is the job of well-qualified educationalists, whose mission is to revitalise a national education system that is going downhill. Such development should be based on efficient schoolteachers who are eager to communicate well with their pupils and become their best friends, not their oppressors in the name of religion.
