MEB’S STUDENT LABORERS
(Publication
Date: February 23, 2007)
No, no, the bag
couldn’t be walking.
I feel as if I’m at a David Copperfield
show.
It must be an illusion!
No, no, there’s something else going on here…
***
I’ve been incredibly
excited these past few days; don’t ask!
Unbelievably excited!
I have two lottery
tickets in my hand.
And that’s exactly what
I’m excited about!
If I win, a
decorating company will build a column…
I really want the column
to be mine.
Every time I get home, I
imagine:
“If I win the column, I’ll have it
put right in the middle of the living room,” I think…
Of course, I imagine this
without letting my wife know, because it’ll be a surprise for her too!
Who knows how happy she’ll be when she finds out there’s going to be a huge column in the middle of our living room(!)
Anyway, as I said,
I have two tickets!
These are tickets for a
“Valuable Goods Lottery” organized by a school’s “parents’ association.”
Don’t let the fact that I called it a “parents’ association” fool you!
They have nothing to do with
families.
Why?
In a moment...
*
Let’s get back to the
subject mentioned in the headline.
The other day, on my way to work,
I came across a bag on the road.
“Come on, what’s so unusual about that?” don’t say!
The bag I saw
was walking!
Don’t say, “How is that possible?”
It was walking…
To find out the secret of the bag walking in front of me, I stepped ahead of it.
And what did I see? It turned out
the bag wasn’t walking; someone was carrying it: a small boy, whom I guessed to be an elementary school student, was trying to walk with a huge bag like a tortoise.
For a moment, I thought of my back and
back pain.
I’m afraid that when this small
boy reaches my age, he’ll face the same problems.
Carrying the same notebooks, books
and school supplies to school every day—what is that if not drudgery?
Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to
solve this problem for years.
School administrations,
the Ministry and non-governmental organizations (such as parents’ associations) seem to enjoy our fellow students’ drudgery…
To solve this problem,
there’s no need to rediscover America; just watch the movies…
For years, I’ve watched the students I see in those films with envy (and jealousy).
They all walk upright.
Look at our students:
they walk hunched over even when they don’t have a bag.
Then we get angry with them:
“Stand up straight, son/daughter,” we say.
How is a child supposed to stand straight?
*
Now, about the tickets…
A friend gave me the tickets I have
in my hand; that is, sold them to me.
Yes, sold them!
The organization that supposedly is a “parents’ association” is putting on a lottery.
The lottery tickets are distributed to students attending that school, 20 each.
They tell the students that they
must sell these tickets, or else they’ll collect the cost of the tickets from them.
The students’ parents, in turn,
try to sell these tickets at their workplaces to their friends and acquaintances, through personal favors (that is, by pleading and begging).
What’s the point of putting
parents in this position?
What does “parents’ association”
even mean?
Also, nowhere on the tickets
does it say how the proceeds will be used.
Where does this money go?
Anyway, in good faith,
let me make a suggestion to them:
Since the Ministry of National Education hasn’t done anything about this for years, you could use the money you raise from these lottery tickets to have lockers made for the students.
Best of luck with it…
See you on Monday… Be respectful in traffic!
Note: I called the Ministry of National Education to get information about the lockers, but whoever answered the phone said they couldn’t provide any information. As luck would have it, the people who could provide information were in a meeting(!) Well, their meetings must be over by now; surely they can provide information now…
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