Curious Teachers

This is post is more on the serious side.
As I was outside today, I remembered one special detail about my schooling in Syria, that particularly bothered me. During the first day of every school year, almost every teacher that made us introduce our selves and tell him/her what our parents did for a living. I was always proud to say that what my parents did, but others in the class weren’t as proud. One kid especially was always shy when answering the question. His dad was disabled and didn’t have a job. I’m still not sure whether he was more embarrassed of his dad not working, or being disabled. When ever the teacher would ask, my friend would say “my dad doesn’t work”, then the teacher being as ignorant as he is would ask “well, why not?” like if it was any of his business. My friend would then say “ he’s disabled.” A few months before finishing school, and coming to Canada, my friend’s dad passed away. I wonder if he feels worse now when being asked the question.

What bothers me, is the origin of such questions. Is it that Arabs ask too many question in general? Or was I just unlucky with the teachers I had?

Here’s another occasion where a dumb question was asked. My friend, different guy from the one mentioned above, had a problem with leg. He was born with this problem which disabled him from being able to bend his knee to a great extent. So when he walked, he would always stiffen one leg, and therefore limp slightly. I still remember the pressure that he used to place on my shoulder when we walked to school. Anyway, one time my friend didn’t do his homework, and the teacher called him to up to the front of the class, so he would punish him (usually by being hit on the hands with a stick). On the way up to the front of the class, the teacher noticed the limp, and he thought that the limp was being faked by my friend. The teacher thought of that as an insult, after all he couldn’t wait forever waiting for my friend to slowly limp to him. The teacher screamed at him “why are you limping? Are you trying to fool me?” Some of us stuck up for the poor kid and informed the teacher of the truth behind the limp. The teacher didn’t care, he didn’t even care to apologize to my friend who was embarrassed by the whole situation.

Perhaps I’m focusing on the bad stories here, I had some great teachers as well. Teachers that I’ll remember for a long time to come. Perhaps I’ll have a future post about them as well.

P.S Pardon the poor grammar, I don’t have time to edit :(