On Strike

Today, I talked to one of my colleagues who said that he had rarely or never gone on strike. And he added that he is against strikes. When I asked him why, one of the reasons he gave me is that he is originally from Zagora and as a native citizen, he had to work for the sake of those students.

His likes have given me other reasons, among the latter are: As muslims, we have to work every day to provide the best for the students no matter what the circumstances. Others go on to believe that by going on strike, we are damaging and putting harm to the quality of education. Some others excuse their not going on strike by having to catch up on the lessons not taught yet. Worse are those who do not go on strike mainly because they want to prove to others that they are committed, hard-working teachers.

Anyway, countless are the flimsy and unfounded reasons and excuses non-strikers make.In fact, I do respect their views as long as they do not interfere with my going on strike. In response to the excuses or so-called reasons above, I would mainly attribute not going on strike to the fact that some teachers are short-sighted and immature.

They just worry about the current situation of the educational system and rarely or never about the future situation. They have to read over and over again the real, logical reasons behind going on strike. Teachers who have not been paid yet must go on strike so that they can be paid the soonest possible to guarantee the future of millions of coming teachers and students, not the present ones.

Teachers working in remote areas must go on strike so that they will be paid better than their counterparts to guarantee a good future for coming students, not the present ones. Underpaid teachers must go on strike because when they think about financial problems, they do not teach as well as well-paid ones.

Here, present students may lose lots of things as a result of strikes but coming ones will have good teachers. This is just to name but a few. Anyway, I have come to the conclusion that those who go on strike are implicitly or explicitly demanding reform and a better future for their students, whereas those who do not go on strikes are merely making the current situation of the educational system stagnant and worse.

It is true that they work, but I am certain that this work is short-lived and will have no long-term results. Not going on strike must mean either that everything is already going as planned or that our hopes for a good educational system are already dashed and therefore it is no longer use going on strike.