Albert Camus and respect for teachers

On November 19, 1957, Albert Camus took up his pen to write to the man who had been his primary school teacher, Louis Germain. A few weeks earlier, the writer had been informed of the awarding of the Nobel Prize. Camus reveals to his teacher and friend: “When I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you”. Camus also reminds his teacher of the debt of gratitude he owes him: “Without you, without that affectionate hand you reached out to the poor boy that I was, without your teaching and your example, none of this would have happened”.The relationship with his teacher is captured by Camus in his autobiographical novel The First Man. The writer, coming from a family of Menorcan descent, was born in 1913 in Algeria, in a very humble context. Germain knew how to see in that child exceptional qualities and did everything in his power for him to obtain a scholarship to study at the lyceum. So much so that the teacher visited his mother and grandmother, with whom Albert lived –his father had died in the First World War–, to convince them to allow him to continue studying. His mother and grandmother counted on Albert starting to work, which was by no means trivial given the poverty in which they lived. Germain achieved both things: that Camus passed the tests and won the scholarship, and that the family accepted that he enter the lyceum, which he did when he was about to turn eleven years old.Camus, Mr. Germain, and The First Man came to mind while thinking about the serious –very serious– problem we have with education. This school year has started with a strike, and nothing indicates that the conflict will be resolved in the short term. Beyond the confrontation between teachers and professors and the Generalitat, however, and the possible agreements they may reach, the underlying problem, that of quality –in the global, integral sense–, will take a long time to be resolved, assuming it is ever achieved.We have all had teachers and professors for whom we feel enormous affection and gratitude. The quote by Camus that I wanted to include above explains, or comes close to explaining, why we remember them this way. The writer expresses to his teacher his gratitude for the learning he received from him and also for his "example". Teachers must teach, and they must teach well. But those who remain in our memory are those who, in addition, manage to connect and be admired, to move us beyond the subject matter they deal with. There are teaching professionals who have this extraordinary capacity, this gift, to reach their students.

The little boy that was Albert Camus felt great respect for Germain and the rest of his teachers. And it never crossed his mind to question their authority. Nor his family's. That child learned in an extraordinary way for his age because he respected and admired that man (there can be no admiration if there is no respect first). Camus believed in it: he believed in the teacher, but above all in the person. This seems to me to be what the writer means when he speaks of the "example" that, for him, Germain represented.At this point, we find ourselves squarely facing one of the causes of the education crisis, a cause that, unfortunately, is not fought with demonstrations. Neither with more laws and rules, nor by pouring the necessary massive resources into our education system. It is absolutely necessary to restore to teachers and professors the respect and authority they deserve and need. The erosion that respect, authority, and, ultimately, the prestige of teachers have suffered responds to deep, tectonic changes in our society. This mutation of values inevitably permeates families and, therefore, children. Children and young people behave in the way they perceive they can behave, and the efforts of teachers and professors prove completely insufficient to impose their authority.A good friend of my generation—which is the generation that did the EGB—often remarks, while summarizing the situation that has been reached: “Before, if a teacher called home, the boy or girl had a serious problem. Today, on the other hand, if the teacher calls, the one who has a problem, and a big one at that, is the teacher.” The idea has taken hold that the teaching staff is a service provider and they are treated as if they were an employee. In Camus’s case, his family let him continue his studies—despite the great sacrifice that this entailed—because teachers back then were respected figures, with prestige. Today, probably, Louis Germain would not dare to take a step like the one he took, and if he did, surely the relatives would brush him off in a bad way, barking at that good man: “But who do you think you are?”