Teachers staged sit-ins and demonstrations on Sunday in Cairo, Alexandria, Daqahliya, Fayoum and Minya, chanting against the state-backed Teachers’ Syndicate and the Minister of Education. Slogans included: “We want a free syndicate! Life has become tough!”
[The govt’s “assessment exams” torn to pieces by angry teachers in front of Helwan University]
Sarah Carr reports:
About 120 school teachers expressed their rejection of government plans to link pay increases with teachers’ performance in assessment exams at a protest Thursday.
Teachers say that the examinations are “humiliating.”
During the protest, which took place on the steps of the Teachers’ Syndicate in Zamalek, demonstrators held up banners reading “No to testing of teachers…no to humiliation of teachers” and “Fair pay and free syndicate.”
Examinations will test their knowledge of a variety of subjects not necessarily related to the discipline they teach.
“Why should I be tested on my knowledge of Arabic grammar when I teach geometry?” Muhammad Ibrahim Dessouqy asked.
“Some of the teachers who will be tested have been in the profession for over 30 years — they are the ones who taught the minister of education himself. Why after 30 years of teaching are they being tested now?”
Hundreds of citizens stormed and smashed the offices of the police and private security at a south Cairo underground metro station Wednesday night after security assaulted a lawyer, El-Badeel reports.
Security personnel in the Dar Essalam Metro Station with the help of two Police Corporals beat a lawyer till he passed out. The citizens, thinking the lawyer was dead, stormed and destroyed the offices of the police, private security, station manager and the cashiers. Also the demonstrators took down Hosni Mubarak’s picture hung on the wall of the police office, and stepped on it Mahalla-style.
Those interviewed in El-Badeel article complained of mistreatment on the hands of security and station officials, and said the latter were regularly harassing the women passengers.