A friend of mine once made an interesting observation about the way the Maltese depict different professions in our home-grown television series. Doctors always get a free pass because they’re there to cure you but lawyers aren’t usually that lucky. Teachers, well they don’t even get an honourable mention. After all, according to the ‘Maltese Job Bible’, they get three months of paid holidays a year which they certainly don’t deserve.
It’s a thankless task being a teacher but if you needed further proof of that then you need only meander down the dirty, dank corridors of social media where everyone and their mother feels entitled to vomit any passing thought that fleetingly occupies their mind in disjointed, grammatically incoherent posts.
This week, apart from the usual slew of illegible comments about teachers being entitled, glorified babysitters, one stood out among the rest. A woman who seems to have forgotten that we are in the midst of a global pandemic, took to Facebook to accuse teachers of being lazy because of their understandable concerns about how schools are to function in this brave new world we find ourselves in.
The focus was, not of course, on the safety of the children or the educators; apparently, we shouldn’t care at all about the latter. No, the focus was on telling teachers in no uncertain terms that there was no way that their work could be compared to a doctor’s, nurse’s, pharmacist’s or lawyer’s. How’s that for motivation? And then we wonder why it’s impossible to get people to teach.
I write today because a teacher believed in me- Anna Marie Galea
She is right, of course. A dedicated teacher’s work can’t be compared to any other profession but not for the reasons she illustrated. Teachers do not just go in and handle our children, though God knows, that would be enough for me to hand over a gold medal with some of the children I’ve seen running around lately. On top of all the hours spent teaching, there is a vast amount of work they do which goes unnoticed and clearly unappreciated.
It’s not just preparing for the lessons either: it’s the correcting of homework, reading up on more things, the setting of sometimes weekly tests and exams; the after-hour e-mails and questions; the management of children in crisis, of children with learning difficulties, of children ill-treated at home. Those three-month holidays that everyone keeps harping on about are taken up by meetings and preparations for the new, scholastic year. Somewhere along the line, the average Maltese person in the street decided that teachers were some kind of pantomime villain undeserving of compassion, and it shows.
When they are appreciated, teachers can nurture and help your child to grow and find themselves. Some of the most inspiring moments in my life came from educators who saw my strengths and weaknesses and helped me discover what I could be. I write today because a teacher believed in me. Teaching is not just a profession: it is a vocation, and if people keep treating it in this disgusting way, it is society at large who will suffer.
Whatever your teleserial tells you, it’s only through education that we can truly flourish. It’s only through education that you can write legible, coherent messages on social media the rest of us are able to read, and if you can’t find any other incentive to get over yourself and your misconceptions, please feel free to use that one. You’ll be doing us all a favour.