Male and female teachers in the Kingdom have criticized the Ministry of Education for failing to address classroom violence and have called for action to reaffirm their authority. Teachers say that indecisive action from the ministry and what they view as partiality in the way it has dealt with some cases has only served to widen the gap between teacher and pupil and give pupils the license to repeat acts of aggression against their tutors. Teachers have appealed to Prince Faisal Bin Abdullah Bin Mohammed, Minister of Education, to make the question of teacher authority a main priority in his new post, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Arabic daily said. Certain sections of teachers, according to the report, have witnessed a tangible increase in the number of acts of aggression committed by their students, including personal physical attacks and deliberate damage to their private vehicles, over the past three years. The newspaper quotes sources as saying that over the last three years the western region of the Kingdom has registered more than 90 incidents of aggression against teachers, some resulting in serious physical injury, while most incidents centered around attacks on teachers' private vehicles such as damaging wheels and filling fuel tanks with stones or sand. Teachers have also reported receiving inciting and threatening letters. Most cases reportedly involved secondary school teachers. Abdul Aziz Al-Jarallah, spokesman for the Ministry of Education, told Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that the ministry spared no efforts in ensuring teacher stability both psychologically and in the workplace to enable teachers to carry out their task of raising and educating their students to the best of their abilities. “Teachers are one of the cornerstones of the education process, and connection with them is a main ingredient for education,” Al-Jarallah said. “Ministry officials closely follow any incidents of aggression against teachers, whether inside school premises or outside. The ministry would ask pupils' families to be a partner in their children's education and to maintain contact with school principals and teachers to guarantee a quality education,” he said. “We also hope,” Al-Jarallah continued, “to see all forms of the media take part in promoting moral behavior, the culture of dialogue and an awareness of the importance of education and knowledge. Society also has a prominent role to play in these efforts, through mosques, clubs, and cultural forums, to promoting a culture of tolerance, dialogue, and mutual respect.” Repeated incidents of classroom violence led to regional governors taking resolute action against some students, in some cases involving lashes of the whip. Prince Abdul Majed Bin Abdul Aziz, former governor of the Makkah province, was the first to order lashes in the punishment of a student and his father after they attacked a teacher at a school in Jeddah, while an incident in Al-Maramiya, 280 km from Yanbu, provoked widespread concern when the entire teaching staff at a secondary school requested a transfer after a group of more than 100 students, all related to one another by extended family, attacked the staff after failing in examinations. One teacher in Taif, who refused to give his name, said that he was repeatedly struck by a student in front of the rest of the class. “We are always asking for improvements in behavior, but some pupils see this as a sign of weakness in the teacher's character,” he said. “What happened to me forced me to transfer to another school after I could no longer look my students in the face as they'd lost all respect for me.” The teacher, who has spent over two decades working in education, believes that times have changed drastically. “When I was at university we would be scared walking down the road where our teachers lived. Now we the teachers are too scared to go down the streets where our pupils live,” he said. “The fault lies with the ministry which has indirectly helped pupils to attack their educators by issuing strongly-worded circulars warning against any physical contact of any kind with students, which has led students to utterly demean the teacher's authority.” __
