Hungry Education

Novinite Insider » EDITORIAL | December 2, 2005, Friday // 00:00

By Despina Koleva

Q: What's the shortest Bulgarian joke?
A: One day, a teacher had his belly full...

Sad but true, Bulgarian teachers have taken the empty belly issue out of the realm of figurativeness to give it a whole new literal meaning. Tens of them went on a hunger strike to demand an increase in salaries.

Vegetating on juice and water, the ones supposed to turn the country's pimpled teenagers into intelligent human beings, have fainted in classrooms in the name of an apparently doomed cause. A sorrowful outcome of their actions has been looming on the horizon.

On Wednesday Parliamentary Speaker Georgi Pirinski scolded Bulgaria's Education Minister Daniel Vulchev and ex finance minister and MP from Simeon II National Movement Milen Velchev for their support to the teachers' protests. In Pirinski's words, the problem was in the realm of the Council of Ministers' responsibilities. Thus, he argued, each member of the government should participate in the establishment of a common position to be presented in Parliament.

This part of his argument I understand. But I somehow fail to fathom the logic behind his allegations that some members of the Cabinet are acting as a party representatives rather than as ministers with regard to Education Minister Vulchev. While I do not attempt to defend Vulchev's persona or statements in any way, I cannot but ask myself, what kind of a human being would fail to sympathize to these people's cause. Their effort to change the status quo has certainly not arisen from the bare whim to wage a crusade against the state. Rather, it has originated from years of humiliatingly underpaid labor, condemning them to merely below the line existence. And when these educators have tried to let themselves loose from the vicious circle by teaching private lessons for a little extra money, they have been blamed and traduced for doing so.

Long story as it is, at the end of the day a certain axiom might prove true. Hungry education yields poor results. Mundane as it may sound, what lurks behind is of consequences far worse than what might be suspected.

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