The tragedy of the Yemeni teacher

All ancient and modern philosophies, theories, constitutions and principles of revolutions agree on the idealism and importance of the teacher, and view him as a leader who undertakes to build society and create its basic building blocks that guarantee a scientific, cultural and cognitive renaissance for any nation, and under no circumstances can this truth be disrupted or deviated from.

The tragedy of the Yemeni teacher encapsulates the enormity of war, the ugliness of conflict, and the wrinkles of collapse. The images of this tragedy were revealed, its pains became apparent, and its groans were heard. It was met with nothing but disregard and disregard, without taking into account any danger we will face in the future as long as we remain silent and deny this hero, the true maker of generations, and the first person responsible for the fragmentation of our awareness, culture, and knowledge in this existence.

The Yemeni teacher has endured for a whole decade, resisting all factors of erosion and uprooting, and the deterioration of the political situation, which was primarily negatively reflected on him. His importance was swept away and his value was torn apart in the folds of that deterioration, until he reached a state of death, after his strength had failed and his energy had been exhausted in bearing his material misery, his collapsed psyche, and his fading status.

The political division in Yemen - caused by the Houthi coup - imposed part of its policies and dependency on the teacher. In the Houthi areas, the teacher has been deprived of his salary for years because the Houthi militias view him as an enemy opposed to their hidden goal of consolidating ignorance, destroying the education sector, and imposing another model for it that stems from its sectarian ideology and self-perception, or pushing the youth to the front lines as a counterpart to education.

As for the legitimate liberated areas, keeping the landmark in this miserable condition is a national crime and a great betrayal of the goals of the September 26 Revolution, as the landmark represents a central axis in the heart of the existential battle between the republic and the imamate.

The celebration of World Teachers' Day was lackluster by the political leadership, the government, the relevant ministry, the elites and intellectuals. Everyone uttered several dead sentences on social media, as a mere propaganda commitment to public opinion. However, this fleeting, momentary enthusiasm reflects a state of hypocrisy, falsehood and evasion, and does not rise to the level of responsibility and seriousness in considering the issue of the Yemeni teacher an emergency that requires consideration, whether as a state or as a society.

The broken Yemeni teacher received this day with contempt, disgust and pain for his suffering, the amplification of his pain and his self-flagellation as a forgotten and miserable person who lacks the most basic necessities of life, while his failed students enjoy a life of luxury, prestigious positions and a well-known social status, while he staggers on the margins and struggles in secret.

The bitter truth is that evoking the image of the teacher and remembering his existence arises on an orphaned and sudden day and fades away with its decline, then falls into the circle of oblivion for another year, with the insistence on continuing on the path of ignorance without the teacher being a lamp that illuminates the path of the journey and the continuation of the wheel of life.

What is alarming in this context is that the problem is not limited to the current active teacher in the education sector; rather, its repercussions indicate a dark future that the education sector will suffer in the future, as this problem has changed the system of thinking and the perspective of the teacher in the basic structure of education and society, during the suspension of employment in the education sector since 2014, and this matter has left unemployed graduate educators prey to unemployment and despair on the one hand, and a cheap commodity that private schools tamper with and exploit their circumstances at a low price that doubles regret and aversion to the teaching profession.

Not only that, but high school graduates who aspire to join university education have been forced to completely exclude themselves from registering in the College of Education, the main source of teachers, to the point that the College of Education in various Yemeni universities suffers from an almost complete absence of new students joining it, no matter how many concessions it makes in terms of admission requirements; which has prompted it to take steps to close some of its important departments, such as physics and mathematics, and before that, social studies, and the departments that are open each year do not exceed the number of fingers on one hand.

The strange paradox that leads us to the core of the problem is that a large percentage of teachers currently working in education are in the retirement stage. For example, in the city of Taiz, more than 5,000 retired teachers out of a total of 17,000 are still working - despite their retirement due to the absence of a substitute - voluntarily and to preserve the continuity of the educational process without the competent authorities paying attention to containing the situation and putting in place quick solutions to avoid disrupting or stopping schools.

Isn’t the aforementioned package of challenges sufficient to consider education and teachers as top priorities and urgent issues on the table of the government and political leadership before the failure is complete, the inability reaches the stage of failure, and generations come who are difficult to educate if the teacher is on the verge of extinction?

I am not exaggerating in raising this issue or exaggerating its data, but rather the logical dimensions and actual indicators that I closely observe in reality are what prompted me to raise the subject, and not to talk about it as a tweet out of tune; rather, out of real fear of the consequences of postponing this issue indefinitely and justifying that with the political crisis that we are suffering from.

The point that confuses me in this context is that the international organizations active in Yemen have not paid attention to the teacher, and have not included education in their funded projects, and are busy with other matters that do not match the importance and necessity of education and its deterioration. I do not know whether this is deliberate intent or the Yemeni officials’ neglect and marginalization of it in their speeches with the organizations, donors, and countries supporting Yemen.

If we do not restore the Yemeni teacher’s reputation and atone for our neglect of him and leaving him alone to struggle with his misery, the Imamate will swallow up the Republic, since the teacher is the prominent mark and the bright fruit that the Republic produced in the past decades before the Imamate returned in its new Houthi version.