Will Ignored Teachers Cut Zalewska Down to Size in the Election?

Will teachers go to the polls and vote for another candidate, or mobilize their families, relatives and friends? I sincerely urge them to do so. Our teachers (from Lower Silesia and Opole Voivodeship) can tell this incompetent senior official NO. They can stop her on her way to Brussels, where she will continue to compromise Poland and stand on the side of the bad education system. They can do this not as a professional group, but as citizens with the right to vote.

The strike saddened me, not as the mother of a schoolgirl, but as a citizen of this country. We were doing well without a school overloaded with material, outdated teaching methods, and exhausted, stressed teachers without professional support. I believe that this respite did all the children good. And the stories about tearful cousins preparing for their final secondary-school exams because they were unable to improve their grades during the strike should be put among the trolls’ fairy tales.

I was saddened to see how the government and the ruling party could attack their own citizens: brutally, furiously and without mercy. An assault on people who need help rebuilding their respect, authority and strength, precisely for the good of children. Every teacher has the task of working on their self-esteem, but it is much easier to work on oneself in a friendly environment. It is difficult for self-worth to grow in barren soil poisoned by the government’s campaign of vilification.

I was saddened when I watched the teachers’ efforts to preserve their dignity. How they had to prove that they were human too, that they were not camels, that they had feelings, that they had rights, that they meant well.

That is why I believe there is still a chance for a rematch. Teachers are a huge and influential social group. They are a force at the ballot box—both in the May elections to the European Parliament and in the autumn elections to the Sejm. Allow me to put it this way: Dear Teachers, I am counting on you to support me and other citizens of Poland in weakening a party of selective law and often great injustice.