Teachers and teachers’ unions are not the enemy

As countries around the world ease lockdown restrictions, the debate about when and how to open schools rages. South Africa is no different. Since schools in the country reopened on 8 June, with different grades being staggered back in, debate around the issue has been fierce. 

Weeks before schools partially reopened, teachers’ unions and school governing bodies rang alarm bells about schools not meeting the Department of Basic Education’s (DBE) own conditions for the safe reopening of schools. Minister Angie Motshekga failed to respond empathetically to these concerns, instead saying that the department is “not forcing anything down your throat”, giving caregivers the option to keep children at home.

More recently, as teachers’ unions continue to object to the gradual reopening of schools, they are increasingly being vilified. For example, Motshekga reportedly asked unions if teachers should still be paid if schools are closed again. 

Researcher Dr Nic Spaull, who has been a prominent feature of the debate about reopening schools, recently wrote, “By refusing to work, teachers are risking the lives of children and undermining other parts of society that rely on schools at this critical time.”

But framing the issue as simply a matter of “teachers who don’t want to work but want to get paid vs guardians who don’t have an alternative for childcare” is extremely unhelpful at best and destructive at worst. What it does is attempt to pit people who neither created the crisis nor informed the response, against each other. And most importantly, it scapegoats teachers for the DBE’s failures, which is particularly unfair, as the issues raised by teachers have centred on concern for not only their own safety, but also that of learners and workers.

Knowing that schools could not stay closed forever, especially given the government’s own warnings that “this virus will continue to be with us for some time,” which came even before the lockdown began, the DBE failed to use the time provided by the lockdown to prepare schools. 

The vilification of teachers also dismisses many of their very valid concerns. There seems to be an underlying assumption of the uniformity of schools and their assumed readiness, which is simply not true.

As Spaull writes, parents shouldn’t be forced to choose between going to work and taking care of their children, which is really the same thing – to eke out a living to feed one’s children is one part of taking care of them.