We don't need no education

At the cost Polish teachers want to charge for their services we don't need any no education. Teachers in Poland spend the least time actually teaching in Europe. For the 2010-2011 school year, the average Polish teacher spent 14 hours a week in front the chalkboard. Ouch.

A German teacher spent nearly double that, teaching for 26 hours. But it's hardly surprising that a German would work longer than a Pole. Yet, a Spanish teacher spent 25 hours in front of the class, French and Finnish ones some 24 hours, and a Greek teacher taught for 21 hours. My god, Greek teachers worked harder than Polish ones. That's got to be a new low.

The Polish daily Rzeczpospolita notes that before 1982 teachers taught class for a more respectable 26 hours a week. In 1982, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the then ruler of a Communist-controlled Poland still caught in the grip of Martial Law, bought off teachers that had been threatening to strike by agreeing to much shorter working hours and guaranteeing privileges.

The rules still in place don't require Polish teachers to be in school beyond actual lecture hours. Teachers counter probably (and somewhat justifiably) that they don't get paid a lot to sit around at school.

But teachers do get paid to go on holiday. Jaruzelski's largesse and the lack of reform since means Polish teachers get some 80 days of holidays a year. That is nearly three full calendar months of holidays.

Local governments attest that the high cost of teachers combined with low productivity is helping ruin their budgets, according to Rzeczpospolita. Local government reps say that as long as the central government doesn't want to splash out for teacher privileges, it should limit them. Their main demands are to increase working hours, lengthen promotion thresholds and cut holidays.

Teachers, unsurprisingly, are having none of this. Some 96% of them vowed to protest against any limitation of their current rights. A full 30% said they were willing to go on permanent strike.

The Education Ministry, for now, is ready to back down in the face of always unpopular protests with parents. It says no changes will be made to working conditions without teacher approval. We know exactly what that means: there will be no changes.

Change, however, never stops. With Poles ageing fast, there simply won't be enough kids to go around, even if teacher working hours are kept ridiculously short. In this context, it seems the quicker the system can move to paying fewer good teachers well the better. Otherwise, the question really be 'is our children learning?'