TEACHER STRIKES REEK HAVOC
TO THE WORLD:
I am writing about the recent teacher strikes, on behalf of what from my understanding is the majority of the students in the public school system in Australia.
From the age of 5 we are sent to school, and not only are we taught our ABC’s, but we are taught to respect our teachers. At age 17, I alongside many of my fellow students, have had my eyes opened as to the hypocrisy of our learning.
There is a union of people in the community who demand respect, but do not (as a whole), give any in return. The unfortunate fact is that this same group is responsible for the education of the young minds of today. How can students respect an organisation who disrupts the learning, and indeed the very lives, of the young people they are paid to indoctrinate.
I have recently commenced my final year of high-school. As a result of the current strikes, assessment tasks have been stockpiled for days on which students are able to attend; that is, days when there aren’t any teacher strikes.
Not everybody can make their way to school at the designated time of 11am, and those who do are often faced with classes of less than 5 or 10 percent of students in attendance. This means that less work is done on these days, and the school work which was intended for the day is put into storage along with the previously scheduled assessments and exams until a later date.
Assignments upon which students have placed less importance, as they were not due until after other important assignments, are now in danger of incompletion, as class-time previously set aside for doing the assignment is now taken up by the incessant “industrial action”.
The teachers feel that by disrupting the lives of their students they will get their way with the government. What nobody seems to realise, is that neither the government nor the teachers’ union are about to give in, and the people that suffer the most are the ones that have no say in the matter. Maybe it’s time we had a say.
Holding student rallies and protests would only defeat the purpose of getting the much-needed hours of school-work actually completed each week. In writing letters like this, we, as students, are doing what they teachers of NSW should have done in the first place. We are putting our views across without compromising the lives (or futures) of others.
The sad reality is that the students are being the “bigger person” in this stalemate. By continuing to attend lessons as best we can we are showing an interest and a concern in our education, which is more than our teachers seem to be doing at present.
