| THE TEACHERS’ SOCIAL STATUS 09/06/2010 |
| Last updated: 2010-06-10 16:42 EET |
Acknowledged by everybody as being of topmost importance for the Romanian society, the education system is at the same time the central piece of many contradictory opinions. Correlated with insufficient funding, an issue acknowledged as such even by the governments which were supposed to solve it, they draw up the picture of a Romanian education system which, after 20 years of successive but unfinished reforms, is still trying to find the right path.
The paradoxes of Romanian education have been recently highlighted in a study called ‘School as it is’, conducted by the Centrul Educatia 2000+ non-governmental organisation and covering the 2008 – 2010 period. Although the study cannot be taken into account as fully representative, it does stress trends that are very likely to be confirmed by reality. One of the contradictions highlighted is the one regarding the image teachers is in the undergraduate education system have of themselves. Anca Nedelcu, the coordinator of the study, told us what teachers usually think of themselves:
“ They still have a very good self image. They think of themselves as apostles of the Romanian education system, most of them making up an exceptional teaching corp. On the other hand, though, to both parents and students – though the latter are rather reluctant to express their true opinions of those who are supposed to assess them – teachers’ image is not as idyllic as it may sound. When talking about them they actually add nuances that show quite clearly that teachers are not always as communicative and as motivated as they claim to be.”
Teachers’ good opinion of themselves runs counter to the negative image that they are aware they have in the eyes of the public opinion. Teachers know they are held responsible for the deterioration of education in Romania. Anca Nedelcu told us to what extent they actually take responsibility for their student’s failure.
“ When teachers talk about the good results of their students, they take credit for them. It is thanks to them that their students are good. When students are not so good, and even fail, teachers no longer take responsibility for the influence they may have had on that, and tend to externalize guilt. It is not their fault that these students have failed, it is either society’s or parents’ fault.”
And so it is that teachers only take responsibility for positive results, turning their backs on the ever-growing number of failures, shown by statistics. According to a Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, PIRLS for short, Romania ranks 36th out of 45 countries in matters of literacy, text understanding and interpretation skills at the end of the primary education cycle. In 2001, our country ranked 22nd on the same list. This shows that many Romanian students are unable to understand information conveyed in texts, to create links or to identify textual contexts, and posses limited general knowledge.
It is understandable how public opinion would hold the teachers responsible for this situation. However, teachers have their own solid arguments on the causes behind this state of affairs. Nicolaie Constantin, engineer and professor with the Energy Technical School in Bucharest told us:
“Many young teachers have migrated to other regions, leaving room for substitute teachers. There are thousands of substitute teachers in Romania, who do not have the necessary experience and are replaced pretty often. This is why students cannot benefit from continuous training with one teacher or following a single teaching method. Young people are discouraged from pursuing a career in education, and use the short period of time spent working in this field as a launch pad. The education process is falling apart, leaving teachers and students alike with little motivation.”
The main reason behind this lack of motivation is money. A teacher at the start of his or her career in Romania earns, on average, a net salary of some 166 euros. Only after 40 years of teaching can professors reach monthly salary levels of close to 500 euros. Plus bonuses, minus taxes, a teacher ends up with about 430 euros in hand. Students are aware that many times their families are better off than their teachers. Here is professor Nicolaie Constantin again:
“When students come to school wearing designers’ clothes, while teachers wear plain, regular clothes, this creates a bad image of the latter. Students do not pay teachers the same amount of respect that generations before them did, even though the teacher’s role is the same: to help students learn and to provide them guidance towards pursuing a profession. We are even confronted with violence in schools. Parents only come to school at the end of the year, when their children have failed classes or face being held back a grade. And what they do is blame the teachers for failing to do their job.”
Hence, mutual accusations are often the only attempts at finding an explanation for the poor performances recorded by the Romanian education system. Aside from taking note of paradoxes in education, one of the conclusions drawn by the “School as it is” study refers to the feeling of isolation that professors sometimes experience in relation to a society which does not seem to grant them the respect they deserve.
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2010-09-10
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