New School Year

RUSSIANS RETURN TO SCHOOL  

ANXIETY AND ALARM ABOUT NEW RULES. 

A NO-TOUCH FUTURE?

By Stephen Wilson

 

 

"We are faced with a new situation as teachers. Therefore we have to tread very carefully as any school teacher could be taken to court on the basis of any allegation made by a pupil or parent. Even if you do something by accident or innocently you can have problems. So you must keep a distance from pupils, not touch them or raise your voice against them. Even looking at them in a particular way might mean problems. If a teacher gets ill and infects pupils they can sue us. They can also indirectly sue us .. So I must emphasize that you must be very careful. As teachers we face the whole of the system against us and we have little defense against this  .... Our administration has had to prepare 81 kilos of documents to comply with all the rules and regulations. In two years time our school needs accreditation," said a headmistress at a meeting of teachers preparing for the new academic year to Oksana Chebotareva, at a Gymnasium which specializes in Greek and Latin near Prospect Mir, in Moscow. 

The lecture was not the most reassuring start toward the new academic year. Some teachers still felt directions were still too vague and unclear. Oksana told me, "It was just like the atmosphere that Second City Teachers had often mentioned." That is a tense and forbidding atmosphere where teachers have to be extra careful on how they relate to pupils and where the slightest innocuous move could land you in trouble. We only have to mention the case where the music teacher Konstantin Chavdarov was imprisoned for 9 years on the basis of a false testimony. In some way the talk mirrors the anxiety expressed by Veronica Nazarova, in her open letter calling for the release of Chavdarov where she states: 'Already for several years teachers, trainers and doctors in the Russian Federation are in danger where their professional activity, health and life are under threat ... Before the danger of allegations, the accused are practically defenseless'. Now teachers feel threatened not only by the specter of unfair dismissal, but unjust imprisonment!

 

This First of September is not a typical return to school. In contrast to previous occasions, there will be no traditional celebration at school where parents, pupils and teachers meet. Instead, parents will take their children to school and then go home. Parents won't be allowed to enter the school premises. A parent of two children whom I''ll call Dmitri told me, "It is a pity there is no celebration because pupils have not been back to school since around March. I think this should be a special day. As parents we are having to take our children to school twice because of the new strict timetables."

 

Due to Covid 19 crisis, a whole set of orders and rules have been introduced with the aim of avoiding infection. For instance, all school teachers are to be tested before beginning school, pupils are to begin their classes at different times, and remain in one cabinet instead of moving from once classroom to another. So pupils will begin school at different times from 8:15 to 10:20. 

While pupils will be allowed to wear masks or not according to the wishes of their parents, teachers are expected to wear masks at all times. A teacher can take off their mask at a distance while giving a lecture. In addition, pupils will be given the option of studying either on an on-line basis or face to face.  Any school teacher who fails to pass the test will be sent home and should a pupil become ill during lessons, and is found to test positive for Covid 19 the whole class will be sent home for two weeks where they'll do lessons on-line instead.

There are a whole number of questions raised by those rules: 'Can a school teacher refuse to take the medical test as laid down by order 269?' 'What about schools who lack enough rooms for classes?' and 'How will teachers cope with the double burden of giving both face- to-face lessons along with on-line lessons?' Concerning the last questions many school teachers lack the know how of giving on-line lessons and simply send the pupils a lot of homework by correspondence. The option that parents might fill the gap by taking over from teachers at home is not always feasible. This is because often both parents are working from home to supplement their meager incomes. 

Dmitri doubts that such new rules will mean pupils avoid infection. "What if the teacher who is ill and is going from one class to another infects all the children in classes?" And one parent of two children called Olga told me, "I am worried that some of the school teachers who are very old could be infected and suffer a lot. It won't be easy for those teachers".

 

But not all Russians are as anxious and many more than welcome the move to return to school. According to a survey by Rabota. ru, the majority of Russians (63%)  see the return to school in positive terms while only 10% of respondents would like studying to continue on the basis of a long distancing regime. There is little doubt that the new rules and regulations will take some time to get used to. One thing which could certainly make the lives of both teachers and pupils much easier is to cut down the endless red tape, and tests which have been growing rather than receding.  School teachers are asked by parents to teach rather than fill in form after form day in, day out!