However, when comparing the place and position of these three social groups and their status, teachers were left with only their holiday.
Discussion about teaching loads
The draft amendment to the Teachers’ Charter once again raises the issue of teachers’ teaching loads. Please look at the windows of most secondary schools in the evening, where teachers often work until late at night, dividing their teaching load between work before and after noon. In other words, they have 18 hours but work three or four full days. And only they know how much time must be devoted to preparing for classes and, in the case of Polish teachers, marking notebooks.
Linguists
The linguistic revolution, which was intended to replace within a few years in primary and secondary schools the “Russian language,” as young people and some parents called it, with Western languages, caused a great deal of confusion.
First, an army of Russian-language graduates desperately undertook additional studies and changed their qualifications to become librarians, Polish teachers, historians and even catechists, while at the same time the shortage of foreign-language teachers had to be somehow made up for.
Three-year language studies were launched, and the result is that graduates of language colleges go on to pursue master’s degrees and find work everywhere except schools when they hear how much they are being offered in salary. Schools are therefore returning to Russian, but there is now a shortage of teachers.
Upbringing
A school is a specific community. This is particularly true of large vocational school complexes, where young people gather at vocational schools, vocational secondary schools and technical schools. Much time must be devoted to educational matters and to the various phenomena brought by modern civilisation. Teachers must work extensively with young people, from those on the borderline of informal groups to those with exceptional abilities and talents. For a month’s work with a class, the stress, pathological phenomena and shaping of attitudes, one receives remuneration of 105,000 zlotys. I will leave that without comment.
I will not write about the financial problems and the schools’ facilities, since I wrote about them in the previous issue. And in any case, what is there to complain about? The proverb “May you teach other people’s children” was known to everyone who took a job at a school. You brought it upon yourself, “Grzegorz Dyndało.”
And what keeps them in this job? Sometimes it is the smile of a happy child, helping a crying child, the friendly nod of a secondary-school graduate or student who remembers their “professor,” and sometimes more than one person saved from going down the wrong path.
And with this note I conclude, wishing all enthusiasts and strong women plenty of health and satisfaction on Education Day.