Teacher black list

THE BLACK SPOT

             SCORES OF MOSCOW SCHOOL TEACHERS ARE BEING BLACKLISTED

By  Stephen Wilson

             The Department of Education and Science, in Moscow, is believed to  hold

             a digital blacklist available, which on request, is accessible to  headmasters,  

             wondering whether to employ an applicant for a new post . By simply pressing

             a button against the candidate's name they will, in a split second, obtain either

             a 'Yes' or 'no'. If the headmaster receives a 'no', it means 'the teacher has no

             recommendations for the future post of teacher.' In other words, the teacher

             is deemed 'too troublesome' to employ. This is mostly done without any inquiry,

             explanation or full clarification of any kind. Due to this blacklist , many teachers,

             who in the past fell foul of a headmaster often for personal disagreements or trade

             union disputes, can't obtain any new post of teacher in other schools.Their career

             is ruined. The deep trauma of those teachers can't be weighed. They feel not

             just shunned or unwanted. They feel absolute alienation. It is almost like a kind

             of death. Russians refer being put on this list as being granted 'a black spot'

             based on the novel Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, where a pirate

             is sent a piece of paper with a black spot, which suggested a warning of his

             imminent death. {Черной  Меткой } . The Russians more articulately and aptly

             describe it. For the English word 'black-list ' seems a casual understatement !

             But for myself a quotation from Sophocles'  Philoctetes  seems more appropriate

             when he tells the Greeks : "You left me friendless, solitary, without a city, a corpse

             among the living '.

             When the Russian trade union 'Teacher' raised the issue with the Ministry of

             Education and Science they did not receive a straightforward answer. They

             did not deny the existence of such a blacklist. What they did claim is that if

             a headmaster receives the answer : 'No' it does not mean anything bad about

             the teacher but 'only that he receives no recommendations'. So they are trying

             to claim ' we don't have a blacklist but only make a list of teachers without

             recommendations. In succinct terms, they are dishonestly playing with words.

             This digital blacklist is thought to have been conceived only two years ago. It

             seems to have been largely the initiative of the present head of the Moscow

             Department of Education and Science Isaac Kalin . What makes it more effective

             than past blacklists is that it is a universally applied digital system easily available

             and accessible to a headmaster in seconds. A source in the Minister of Education

             claimed that headmasters are free to employ a teacher regardless of whether he is

             on the blacklist. However, the Union Teacher claims : "Our experience is that the

             vast majority of headmasters won't employ a candidate apart from a minority of

             decent headmasters ".The Chairman of Teacher, Vsevolod , stated : "Troubles

             begin when you press this button 'No.' It does not depend on what article you were

             fired under. All the ways to Moscow Education are closed ".

             In fact , a headmaster can find any petty excuse to fire a teacher he or she has

             fallen out with. Under Article 48 of the Law of Education of the Russian Federation

             you can be fired for 'amoral behavior 'which could be anything. For example, a

             teacher at a Moscow Nursery was fired for simply dropping into the toilet  and

             leaving her class unsupervised. But if she had urinated in a bottle in front of

             children she would be fired for 'inappropriate behavior' . So a headmaster will always

             find the slightest petty thing as a pretext for firing someone.

             In one case, the teacher Mikhail Zhdanov of school number 1973 was fired in 2016

             for alleged violations.He had been dismissed after a check of machine tools which

             had gone missing and amounted to a staggering amount of 1.7 million rubles in

             damage. He and his wife lost their posts after 'an investigation'. He states : "I refused

             to make a declaration that I willingly left my post . I and wife took  this up in court".

             He stated he had been without work for over two years. Unfortunately , he lost his

             case as the court refused to reinstate him to his former post.

             In another case, a biology teacher  refused to give his real name. He stated : "I have

             been without work for one and half years. I was forced out of school because I got

             into a conflict with parents who were not satisfied with how I taught their children....

             Yet I successfully prepared no less than ten children who entered a leading medical

             University of the country. " The biology teacher found that no matter what school he

             applied to, he never got the job. Then one headmaster interviewing him spilled the

             beans by informing him that his name was on a blacklist.

             However, the trade union Teacher has launched an impressive campaign to ban

             this blacklist which clearly and blatantly violates Russian law. They have made an

             appeal to fired teachers to come forward with details about their cases, organised

             a petition against the blacklist which has so far attracted thousands of signatures

             and organised public pickets of Government offices. Many sympathetic journalists

             in the Russian press have written great articles on the issue. For example , this

             article owes a great debt to Maria Lemutkina, who wrote an excellent article for

             Moskovskii  Komsomolets , 19.2.19  titled in Russian: 'Заклейменные Черной

             Меткой '.