Teacher Strike!

23 October, 13

Spain is in the middle of La Crisis. It is all part of the worldwide financial meltdown that began way back in August, 2007. I remember visiting here in 2001, just prior to the conversion from the peseta to the Euro. There were big cranes all over the place, and buildings were popping up like mushrooms in the forest. I asked my friend, Antonio, what was going on, and he told me that people were laundering old money with construction projects.

Now many cranes are sitting idle all over the country. I suppose it is cheaper to leave them where they are than to dismantle and store them. Four or five of them dot the landscape in La Alberca, so we have not been immune to La Crisis, but it is pretty hard to find any other evidence.

Everybody we have met has a job, and many of them are quite good. We don't see beggars in the street. We don't see bread lines or riots. The first personal encounter we have had so far has just hit us this week.

Teachers are going on strike.

It seems the government has cut their pay over the last few years, in an effort to get the budget under control, and the teachers are fed up. The rage is welling up in their souls, and they must be heard.

In a show of solidarity, the high school students at IES Alquibla, where Elizabeth attends, staged a strike of their own. It was a stirring show of support for their beloved teachers, as the students decided not to show up for class. Of course Elizabeth was swept up by her passion for teachers and education in general. She begged us to allow her to go on strike as well.

How could she focus on her schoolwork, knowing these poor teachers were underpaid and overworked?

How could she sit in a classroom, the very site of this financial slavery?

"Give me fully compensated teachers, or give me death!"

Her fervor reached a fever pitch last night, when we informed her that she would have to attend school, even if all her friends decided to go to the park and have fun instead. Her heart ached for teacher equality. She pined for a fair and reasonable wage on behalf of her teachers. She pleaded for the opportunity to make a declaration of independence from government tyranny. But to no avail.

We made her go to school, reasoning that she needed every minute available to learn the language and get a little ahead on her studies. Going to school when nobody was there would afford her the opportunity to meet with her teachers one on one and get some good teaching from them.

Elizabeth was not happy. We were ruining her life. We were making her look uncool. Blah. Blah. Blah. Insert your own teenage girl angst-filled histrionics.

She went to school, a slave to the system.

At 9:30, I got a phone call from my friend, Julio, asking if I could pick up his daughter from school. Apparently, she was the only other student in her class, besides Elizabeth.

Revolution springs up in the strangest ways. The despots just never seem to see it coming, do they? I went to school and scooped up Che Guevara and Sam Adams, feeling the sting of my defeat at the hands of the proletariat.

Or so they thought. (Insert evil laughter)

I deposited Julia at her house. I don't have a dog in that fight.

Elizabeth and I walked home in silence. She defiant and me calculating. That's when I had a stroke of tyrannical genius. She wasn't going to school. School was coming to her.

We got home and immediately started working on math, the bane of Elizabeth's existence. Polynomials. Order of operations. Powers. And tomorrow, when the teachers are really striking, more of the same. Bwahahahahah!


I lost a battle. I will win the war.