(MENAFN- Alghad Newspaper)
The Social Media was recently overrun by an expressively painful resignation letter, written by one of the Ministry of Education's teachers. In his letter, he said that his resignation was due to being overwhelmed by the futility of public education.
He described the public schooling system as unviable, unfit, and provided an extremely intelligent analysis of the reality of our education process today.
Meanwhile, news have been running the papers on protests and demonstrations by students and their parents, over the deteriorated infrastructures of many Jordanians schools.
In fact, in several governorates, there are public schools unfit to host students in the first place.
That said, we understand perfectly the resigning teacher's criticism, and the protests.
In truth, they are reflective of our education reality and the scarcity of allocated resources.
More so, it shows well that our infrastructure is functionally limited, and it underscores as well the regressing value of teachers, among many other things.
Not to mention the incompetence and inadequacy of many teachers.
These issues can no longer be kept secret or denied!
If we were to put our frustration and disappointments in words, we'd soon be standing across from a mountain of papers similar to the teacher's letter.
In some schools, there are up to 50 students per classroom.
Such a setting cannot provide the least appropriate conditions for education.
That in mind, what do we do?!
Waiting for the state to intervene and allocate the necessary resources to uplift the sector from this catastrophic state of affairs is unrealisable dream, at least not in the foreseeable future.
The resources needed to salvage our public schools and education system are unfathomable.
So much needs to be done; infrastructural rehabilitation and development, pay-grade upscaling and raises, teacher development programmes, notwithstanding.
While a lot can be done, very little is expected from the Ministry at this point, especially in light of the financial crisis.
The public sector is barely paying employee wages on the monthly basis, and most of the allocations of the Ministry of Education goes to salaries. There are no actual allocations for schools, infrastructures, or facilities.
Of course, this doesn't mean that we give up, on contraire.
There's a lot we can do on many a tier to help reclaim our education.
The Minister of Education was clear when he said that reforms are not due overnight. It is a gradual, tiring, long transmutation, which is only hardened by the lack of necessary resources!
Nonetheless, the good news is; at least we're no longer in denial.
Finally, we broke free from the typical official standpoint on education.
Now we have a reformist Minister, with the mentality and organised approach to do what needs to be done.
He believes in the importance of reformation, and now that the Queen has taken up the cause for education, pushing it up the scales of government priorities, there is hope for the future.
We have new bodies and institutions trying to advance crucial reformation steps, like the Queen Rania Teacher Academy, and the Curriculum Development Centre.
On many levels, education reforms have been set in motion, to address the very concept of education, its instruments and tools, including curriculum, and the teacher.
Work is underway towards the improvement of the education system at a qualitative scale.
The lack of financial resources, and our inability to improve the pay-scale of teachers at this point, does not mean that we give up on all the other aspects of the reforms altogether.
We can work with what we have for now, and there's a lot of good to come from it!
As for the resigning teacher, his tone, words, diction, and expressions, all reflect a high sense of responsibility and well roundedness.
We need this kind of teachers, yes, but we also need patience to see through the reformation of education.
Therefore, I call upon the brilliant teacher to retract his resignation and resume his noble duties, in this long and most sacred quest for the future.
This article is an edited translation of the Arabic version, published by AlGhad.
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