Tatsiana Seviarynets: Professionals quit schools

The Belarusian ruler wants school teachers to be obedient zombies and slaves.

Tatsiana Seviarynets, a teacher and coordinator of the Belarusian Christian Democracy party (BCD), spoke to charter97.org about Lukashenka's demand to increase discipline of school staff.

“Discipline, stability and so on are a favourite topic of the Belarusian ruler. Teachers already fear to make a wrong step. He began to talk about discipline on purpose, because the teaching load increases from 17 to 20 hours per week. The wages will go up too, but the growth is not significant. They are trying to turn teachers into zombies and obedient slaves. Lukashenka is afraid of mass dismissals of teachers and any protests, so he tightens screws,” the teacher thinks.

She is confident that the carrot and stick approach is reduced just to stick in conditions of the Belarusian totalitarianism.

“Of course, there will be some strikebreakers if teachers begin to quit en masse. Perhaps someone will be happy that his or hear teaching load and wages will grow after other teachers dismiss. But the very fact of dismissals is a catastrophe. Only few people want to work at schools in Belarus. Only few professionals continue to work. I see who quit the school after me – all of them are well-educated and brilliant people. They were replaced by the youth. Maybe they are good and educated, but they don't have the attitude towards the profession as we had. I don't know how they teach children, but judging by the results of school graduation tests I can say that we don't have many professionals. Teachers are more busy with paper work rather than with teaching. The same situation is in the medical sector – doctors spend three minutes on a patient and 15 minutes on papers,” Tatsiana Seviarynets stressed.

The Belarusian dictator said at yesterday's meeting with minister of education Siarhei Maskevich and first deputy head of the president's administration Aliaksandr Radzkou that discipline of academic staff must be increased.

Photo: dw.de