The most important thing about October 5 is that it’s World Teacher’s Day. It was first declared in 1994 by UNESCO (that’s the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund — the E used to stand for “Emergency,” but now it doesn’t) and the ILO (that’s the International Labor Organization, another UN initiative). Teachers everywhere have not (yet) demanded the formation of UNAAO (United Nations Anti-Acronym Organization), but given enough support it’s probably inevitable.
International Teacher’s Day is supposed to provide that kind of support to teachers. They choose an annual theme, which this year is “Valuing teacher voices: Towards a new social contract for education.” There’s an annual awards ceremony, too, where the UNESCO-Hamdan Prizes for excellence in teaching are awarded. The whole thing will be translated in real time into multiple languages by the UN translation team.
The prizes are called the Hamdan awards because of Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the former deputy prime minister of the UAE, who has sponsored and underwritten them since 1994. But commemorating teachers dates back much further than that. Teachers are celebrated on different dates in some countries — for example, it’s October 16 in Chile, November 25 in Indonesia, and in Mexico it’s been May 15 since 1918.
The day is celebrated in different ways around the world as well. In Estonia, senior class members take over the lessons today (or the nearest school day) in order to give teachers a break. Teachers receive gifts in Latvia, where Teacher’s Day is March 9. In Nigeria, schools are closed for the day to give teachers a holiday. Teachers in Thailand receive jasmine wreaths and the day usually features performances by students.
In the US, Teacher’s Day began in 1953, when Eleanor Roosevelt convinced Congress to make a proclamation — Teacher’s Day was March 7 at the time. Then in 1985 the national PTA declared the first week of May to be Teacher Appreciation Week. The National Education Association went along with it, and started celebrating National Teacher Day on the Tuesday of that week. So in the US today is World Teacher’s Day, the first Tuesday in May is National Teacher’s Day, and in the state of Massachusetts there’s another Teacher’s Day on the first Sunday in June. It’s not clear whether teachers have weighed in on the difficulties of trying to teach this.
Some children are educated at home. This is recognized in the US by national Parents as Teachers Day, which is November 8. It’s also covered by the International Day of Education, which is another UN declaration. This one falls on January 24, and instead of being jointly sponsored by VOTGBAs (Various Organizations That Go By Acronyms), it was simply adopted by the UN General Assembly as a whole. Apparently World Teacher’s Day and the various Teachers Days (and related commemorations) around the world weren’t working out as hoped, because the International Day of Education was declared in 2018.
Teachers are real people, but “education” itself is just an abstract idea. In the modern era, being an abstract idea can be dangerous. Sooner or later some group is going to be for it. Then everybody who doesn’t like that group for some reason will have to come out against it. This will go on for a while until war is declared. Then the poor abstract idea is in big trouble, because as everybody knows, abstract ideas have no way to defend themselves. Poverty couldn’t fight back during the War on Poverty. Neither could Drugs or Terror. Abstract ideas are just sitting ducks. On the other hand, wars against them never win.
When they find out war has been declared against them, many — maybe even most— abstract ideas might prefer to simply surrender. That would at least end hostilities, and might result in something constructive, like a reconstruction plan based on a treaty. But they can’t even do that! As a result, there’s never been a war against an abstract idea that’s ever ended. Not even once! There’s nobody to surrender, no way to open negotiations, and even declaring a ceasefire isn’t going to happen because it would have to be unilateral. The poor abstract idea just can’t respond at all.
It almost seems like declaring war on an abstract idea might not be the cleverest idea one could have. But being able to examine an idea and arrive at a judgement about its relative quality isn’t something anyone is born with. You have to learn that sort of thing. It’s well beyond the really basic lessons you just pick up along the way, like “don’t touch the flame” and “never get involved in a land war in Asia.” You need somebody to guide you when you’re trying to learn something like that.
Finding some smart people to be “learning guiders” (or maybe we could think of a better term) sounds to me like one of those high-quality ideas. We should get right on it. It’s going to be a hard job, though. We should make sure the learning guiders know they’re appreciated. Maybe by declaring a special day in their honor. Oh, and they should be well paid, too — that just makes sense, right?
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