Letters from the past

Gulf News looks back over the years at concerns and issues raised by readers in their letters to the newspaper. It's a retrospective that offers an insight into the community, the development of the country and the people. Here is a set of letters from 1987.

Pass on the blame
The Inside Story was a breakthrough. Let us hope that Gulf News' bold revelations will open the eyes of the authorities to pull up the greedy school managements. The teachers, most of whom are housewives, are largely underpaid.

The school managements may say that they are good in teaching compared to trained teachers, but the teachers' incompetence is evident when they are adopting the so-called "lecture method" to which the children find very difficult to cope with.

I know some teachers who write remarks on papers about children and pass them to their parents to rectify. How can a teacher make these remarks if he or she is not able to rectify them in the class?

Teachers who advise parents to send their children for extra tuition are indirectly admitting their failure. Are they not ashamed of this? Parents, after paying a large amount of their salaries to school fees, cannot afford to send their children to yet another costly class.
From Mr Raju Varghese
Abu Dhabi

Clever business
As a parent I greatly admire Gulf News' daring attempt to expose the rampant commercialism, irregularities and exploitation prevalent in private schools in the UAE.

My two children are studying in a school in Dubai. Besides charging exorbitant fees, the school authorities are now threatening to withhold the second term exam results until fees for the remaining months of the academic year are paid in advance.

Another problem is that experienced and qualified teachers are terminated at the end of every academic year and replaced with new teachers, to avoid giving paid leave to the already under-paid teachers. This, in turn, affects the students.

Likewise, transport facilities provided by the school are some of the worst. Students are crammed into buses and are dropped on the wrong side of the road, completely ignoring students' safety.
From A Reader
Dubai

Illogical tactics
The feature exposing how private schools are run was a courageous effort by Gulf News.

For far too long, we as parents have been subjected to exploitation by schools that rip us off, taking our hard earned money at the slightest excuse.

There is one school that refused to give a child his first term report card until the second term fees were fully paid up.

Why are they doing this? It is not as if a parent will not continue to send his or her child to the school if he or she fails to pay the fees.

The logic behind this arm-twisting tactic beats me.
With all this, the school management is still so intent on making their pile, they could not care less.

Everyday we sit in fear that the school bus might be in an accident. Is it too much to ask for the school managements to be a little more humane?
From A Reader
UAE