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Faten El Hajj wrote in “Al Akhbar”:
In the battle of distance education, the formal education teacher was left alone, without “weapons”. There was no electronic platform for him to train on and no device provided to him, so he used his private property to perform public tasks, imposing him to cover seven classes a day with additional administrative burdens.
The first week of distance education in the public sector did not pass peacefully. Everyone agrees that the situation is exceptional and requires an exceptional effort, as long as the decision makers in the Ministry of Education are not in one valley, and the teachers are in another valley, abandoned to “pluck the thorns with their hands”, according to their sources.
The “firm” switch to full remote learning during the blanket lockout period, November 11-30, did not take into account that a teacher might have to give a lesson from their balcony while trying to “catch” a signal from Internet cafe closed next door, or That a student of Bab al-Tabbaneh apologized to the teacher for sending him his homework late because he was waiting for his father to return from work to use his phone, and that the picture of the homework was “dark” due to the power cut, or that only 5 of the 20 students in the class were able to follow the lesson through the online platform, while the rest do not follow up, or follow up, through the traditional WhatsApp media , email and others, without direct interaction with teachers.
A full year has passed since the coronavirus outbreak, with no insight from the ministry. Sources confirm that the educational platform is not available, and even if a tool like “Microsoft Teams” is available, teachers have not been trained in it and a large part of them are still not good at using it, and officials have been waiting for months for donations from donors to provide laptops to teachers who use their own possessions, such as computers and phones. To carry out public functions, unless the teacher can no longer purchase any device or repair it on his own in the event of an urgent breakdown.
All this in the midst of the absence of union bodies that dissolved into political power and abandoned teachers in these exceptional circumstances. As for those who are at the decision-making site, they do not feel, according to the teachers’ sources, “what we are suffering on the ground. Therefore, we fall in love with ambiguous and interpretable decisions and generalizations. “The recent Resolution 536 on the regulation of distance education during the general lockdown period, for example, tied the teachers and interrupted their educational effectiveness. Education Minister Tariq Al-Majzoub did not specify the duration of the class for distance education, while the teacher is obliged to hold about 7 classes in front of the screen to give a complete program without interruptions, unlike education face-to-face where there are opportunities between classes Regarding the reduction of the study plans decided by the Educational Center, it has not yet been made effective.
There was also confusion as to what the minister’s decision required regarding the preparation of weekly reports on all the work carried out with the titles of the lessons and activities carried out and the number of hours carried out in each subject and in each class. Although the decision is clear in terms of assigning this task to principals, coordinators and supervisors, some of these have “handed over” the process to teachers and have imposed administrative burdens on them that have nothing to do with them, in addition to their educational tasks. . This is done despite the fact that the Secondary Education Directorate affirms that the completion and organization of the weekly forms is the sole responsibility of the director or coordinator.
Regarding the lack of concreteness of the class in distance education, the deputy director of Secondary Education Khaled Fayed explained that the opinion of the management has established that the class should be approximately 40 minutes, and “it is an acceptable time for education to distance”. Regarding the presence on the educational platform for seven classes, “it is not mandatory, since the teacher can be present simultaneously with the students in one class and in another session he communicates with them via WhatsApp, email or any other means ( sending a video to do exercises) ”, recognizing that it is not mandatory. The teacher has a specific means of communication or a specific platform, with the need to understand some special cases (lack of knowledge of technology, aging …).
The introduction of educational inspection in the line of virtual control surprised teachers. How can the teacher be left alone in the battle of distance learning and asked the inspection to hold him accountable? The inspection sources were surprised by the portrayal of the inspection as a “scarecrow”, while the new reality “demands that we exercise our supervisory function stipulated in the inspection laws and regulations in distance education, as well as in education. urban “. However, we will not charge any teacher who exceeds their capacity ”.
In this context, the General Inspectorate of Education clarified, in a statement, that it will not bear additional burdens on school officials and that it only requested copies of the reports that are required of them by virtue of Resolution No. 536 of the Minister of Education.
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