euinside

Cause and Effect in European Politics and Law

Why the teachers' strike is useless?

Adelina Marini, November 5, 2007

The struggle for higher wages is in fact individual thinking. It is natural - everyone wants to live better. But is it only the wage that solves all our personal problems? I think - No! If we stop only for a second to think individually and look more globally, we will see then that there are much more serious reasons not only to protest but for monstrous intolerance.

Such reasons might be the lack of elections legislation that would give opportunity for further arrangement of political and private interests just days before each elections. Buying of votes is also worthy to block streets and boulevards because it is neither protection of my personal interest not protection of the society. There should be intolerance against the lack of any will for tackling the chaos on the roads. And here the blame is not only of the traffic police but of the lack of intolerance. The fact that you wait quietly for the green light and you let someone to overtake you and go before you in absolute violence of the rules, means that you support this chaos. Giving a bribe so that one or another document of yours is being forwarded faster by the state administration or so that the traffic police doesn't fine you, or whatever - is a stimulation of chaos.

So what if your salary is big? We all continue to get angry in the first minute after we sit in the car or when we go to the revenue agency, or the municipality, or wherever to do something. I think that this is what we should protest against. The rest will arrange by itself.

Why, we parents, do not protest when there's no good discipline in class? Because when there is even slightest attempt by a teacher to be tough with a child, an aggressive parent comes to ask for explanation and solves the issue with a threat. But this makes all children in the class suffer and their parents as well because the result is just one - because of the lack of discipline no one has heard the lesson and no one has understood it.

And why parents do not protest when they pay for additional private classes for their children? Because they solve their individual problems and do not think globally of the harms such an approach pose. Why no one in the revenue agency doesn't protest against rude and incompetent officer who makes us wait for hours and still doesn't help us? Why do we not protest when the Parliament approves laws which harm us all? Because we don;t care - some of us have big salaries and are above all this, others are nestled in their poverty and end the conversation with: "these are bastards" and "I will not vote for these miserables".

And finally, the strike, by default, is freedom of expression but for me, personally - this is a manifestation of selfishness in a situation when there are so many much more serious issues that we need to solve together. And that is why I'd say: I don;t want my taxes being paid for MPs that fight for their own personal interest, I don;t want my money to go for bad education, bad healthcare, bad administrative service, bad roads, for farming subsidies when I eat awful Dutch tomatoes and Turkish peppers, I don;t want to pay the Ministry of the Interior since it doesn't work effectively and cannot uncover small crimes like who stole my car or my house and etc. and etc.

Probably quite a lot of people here would say: if you don't want get your luggage and go away. I DON'T WANT TO! This is my country and this is where I want to live. This is where I want to live well.