The Malta Union of Teachers has shot down the idea of a virtual class, which enables children to follow lessons from home if they are sick and will also help them revise their schoolwork.
In a report carried on The Malta Independent on Sunday last Sunday, the MUT said that it is “in principle” against having cameras in classrooms and exposing teachers to “direct assessment of parents”.
Although no faces are shown and schoolchildren need passwords to have access to their own class, the MUT, according to its president John Bencini, is not in favour of the idea. The union, he said, cannot accept that teachers’ mistakes could be used against them.
The MUT issued a directive for its members not to involve themselves in such exercises as soon as it became known that a teacher, on a voluntary basis, had introduced the concept at the Birkirkara primary school.
The virtual class idea has worked well in the United States, with an overall nine per cent improvement in results. The local education authorities are encouraging such “innovative and creative” ideas, to use the words of Education Minister Dolores Cristina. “We cannot close the door to new ideas that will help improve the education system.”
What also irked the MUT was that the union came to know of the idea through the media when Mrs Cristina accompanied Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi during a visit at the school. School principal Frank Fabri “should have come to us first” before going to the media, Mr Bencini told TMIS.
It is clear, from the way things happened, that the MUT believes that first of all it has a sacrosanct right to be informed, updated and consulted on anything that happens in schools – as if it is the union that is running them. It seems that the union will not allow anything to happen unless it gives its permission. In taking this attitude, the MUT is adopting a rather arrogant position because, after all, school principals and teachers are accountable to the school authorities, not the union.
On most occasions, when there is something new, the union’s first reaction is an immediate opposition and, in this case, this happened before it had even checked the facts.
The MUT issued its directive on the premise that it believed that webcams in classrooms would have meant that children and teachers are caught on camera, when this is absolutely not the case, as it is only the whiteboard that is shown, and only voices are heard.
The excuse given by Mr Bencini – that initially the idea was to have faces showing online and that it was changed only after the MUT protested about it – is too lame. We are sure that the school authorities know about privacy and data protection laws, and would have not risked breaching them.
One gets the distinct impression that the MUT here is defending teachers who are too lazy to introduce new ideas that could help the education system improve, giving students a more comprehensive schooling and at the same time providing them with the possibility to review their schoolwork at home.
It is doing this at the expense of those many other teachers who are willing to go out of their way – and even ignore directives such as the one issued on this matter by the union – to be of a better service to their students.
In other words, through its directive and stand, the MUT is seen as a union that is against progress and against technological advances. All unions are notoriously known for their resistance to change and inability to accept new ideas – and the MUT has proved this notion correct.