Ți-aș spune ceva,
despre noi,
despre zăpada de-afară,
despre dragostea mea.
Ți-aș spune ceva,
orice,
numai să nu crească iarba tăcerii între noi.
Ți-aș spune ceva,
ce-ai știut,
sau ce știu,
dar a-nceput să crească iarba tăcerii între noi
și s-au rătăcit sunetele din cuvântul târziu.
(Octavian Paler, Definiția unui strigăt)
My sisters are still in high school, and in high school there’s this tradition to buy gifts for teachers. I know this from my own experience, but unlike my sisters, during MY high school days, I also knew my father’s principles from inside out. Thus asking him for unnecessary “school” money was always very embarrassing, and I tried to avoid it as much as possible. Of course I still asked him for money, but when it was about extra money for something I wasn’t particularly keen on paying for, I tried my best to show that I didn’t really mind if he said yes or no.
I’m sure everyone is familiar that in Romania we are now experiencing wage and pension cuts. My sisters’ class has decided to raise money, (25 Lei per child), to buy their form-teacher, (diriginte), an expensive watch. This gift is somehow supposed to make him feel better for the 25 % he is going to lose from his salary. Now, my father is a very ethical person, and he is always willing to explain his motives because he truly believes that he acts accordingly to what is morally right. So he wrote an e-mail to all three of us, (he sent it to me as well, just in case the girls don’t check their inbox), explaining his reasons for saying “No”. This is what he says:
“My dear D.and M.,
I must explain this to you in writing, given that we do not seem to have the time to meet and talk these days.
I want you to wake up to the fact that a growing number of people, including government paid workers and pensioners, are in the streets, protesting against the wage and pension cuts announced by president and government ministers. Beginning next month, many of these people will go home with 25% or 15% less money in their pockets, thus wondering how in the world they could pay back bank loans and acquire vitally important medicines. I believe you are aware of the current strikes and protests, and I am not saying here that you aren’t; yet I think, for some strange reasons, you (and perhaps your colleagues more than you) deliberately choose to ignore the potentially aggravating financial and economic hardships.
Let me remind you also that teachers are part of this protest movement because their salaries will be diminished with 25%, too. It is possible (in fact, very likely), I think, that the teachers’ unions will finally manage to successfully boycott the end of the academic year and cause serious havoc for the entire learning process. With the growing general dissatisfaction and smell of blood, I would be surprised if teachers would not seize the opportunity to impose their demands on the government. I am not saying they are wrong or that they are not entitled to defend their present wages. What I am saying is that most of them (admittedly not all) will be struggling financially, much like anyone else affected by the cuts.
So, against this background, the fundraising in which your colleagues are engaging seems to me morally questionable. I appreciate that your class wants to buy a birthday present for your form teacher. However, even that, in and of itself, is quite clearly unethical; you know that a teacher in Britain, France or Germany would immediately be sacked if she/he received gifts of any kind from students or parents. But I will make this concession to you, that in the Romanian school context, many students engage exactly in such unethical behaviour, either on their own initiative or at the implicit or explicit request from the teacher. Surely I do not wish to embarrass you in front of your peers, but sooner or later you will have to start questioning the practice, and I will give you a number of possible reasons:
a) The teacher loses his/her dignity and compromises his/her authority when he/she accepts (or worse, expects) gifts from students!
b) The offer of a luxury gift, like a very expensive watch, is always morally wrong, but it is even worse when a large number of families, students’ families included, are affected by drastic cuts in their wages!
c) A luxury gift is, by definition, not a necessary gift; it does not cover a need (surely, he can do without it or with a very cheap one) and cannot be regarded as some sort of compensation for the loss of money that he might suffer as a result of wage cuts! That is, you are not offering him wood for fire in winter, knowing that he cannot afford it; or food, knowing that he experiences serious shortages in times of economic hardships. You are offering him something to brag about or satisfy his vanity, which make me wonder, jokingly but also seriously, what might stop you, in theory, from offering him a Ferrari next time?
d) The practice of gift-to-teachers greatly embarrasses students from low income families, who cannot afford to contribute or struggle to meet such expectations subtly or overtly imposed on them. This practice often leads to discrimination, social stigma, and bullying in school, as well as putting a strain on relationships at home between children and parents. Incidentally, what troubles me is that children alone decide the amount of money and kind of gift, without consulting the parents, whose money they actually commit in this purchase.
Of course, it is not a question about having the money you are asking for. In fact, thinking about it now, it would have certainly been easier for me to give you 25 lei instead of spending 10 minutes to write such a long email. But I feel that, generally speaking, you do not give your parents a fair hearing on matters that affect them, not only you; nor do you seriously and deliberately show any inclination for critical thinking on moral or cultural matters, though the time you spend in school is supposed to offer you precisely such skills. You go with the flow, most of the time, unable to stop and reflect on the why-s and why-not-s of your actions. That is disappointing!
As I said, I would be happy to give you 10 lei each tomorrow, on two conditions: a) you do not add your 15 lei pocket money to still meet the demand for a luxury watch; and b) you lobby for a change in the nature of the birthday gift, which should be rather more symbolic and compatible with the economic hardships we experience in the world today.
With love,
Dad”
My reason for posting this is because I’ll always want to remember the way my father thought these matters through. We’ve had many quarrels in the past about the things we should or should not accept from this world, but I have nothing to argue with him here. And it’s not even my fight.
I only hope that my sisters will grow to see that the only reason why he makes these “No’s” so exhaustively long, is because he really does care that much.
Si Eu POT. 