I wrote a powerful and angry piece last week on the impulse of outrage after seeing a video of an English teacher being humiliated and sexually harassed in a classroom. I’m glad I resisted the urge to post this. It was full of hasty generalizations and exaggerations. Today I think I can write something clearer and more authentic.

I will say from the outset that I do not believe that the complex and interconnected layers of causality behind episodes of this nature can be fully understood without further investigation, perhaps through the means of sociology. I think our responses as individuals are quick, partial immune responses, often plausible but without lasting effects. It is good that we are reacting, but our reaction alone will not change anything in the long run. Only intelligent, systematic and structured pressure on those who shape public policy has a chance of success. Only established and balanced demands will be able to target the deeper layers of the Romanian educational collapse. Why we are apparently unable to do so is the subject of another intervention.

As for the case of Pietricheau, I was worried not so much about the cruelty and indifference of the students, but my soul, as a person who has always lived in Romania, is used to them and tries every day not to get immunity.

Their deep cruelty, their unbearable cruelty, it seemed to me, lay primarily in their secondary, symbolic meaning, and not in what they demonstrated overtly.

Because there is something grotesque and abnormal about the images of a teacher trying to continue a sentence in English while two boys are faking rape. Something grotesque and caricature, but deeply believable and evocative. We all watch and know that a little pseudo-porn scene hides a deeper truth, and that’s the only thing we find unbearable.

This truth, simple and terrible, is that school doesn’t (anymore) matter. It is an anomic and almost useless environment, an environment that nurtures only the rare, the exceptional, and the endemic. This is observed not only in classrooms, where sexual acts are staged, knives are drawn or blows are inflicted. You can also see where everything seems to be calm and settled. Even where “excellence” reigns. We see this everywhere and every day.

This can be seen in the persistent opposition, even sometimes seemingly polite, of students whom you can no longer (not that many want to) involve in any long-term intellectual project. In the haggard looks of some kids who have been meditating since elementary school. This shows in the apparent disconnect between what happens in the classroom and what matters in their lives. This can be seen in the firm and axiomatic hostility between the educated and the majority of teachers. This can be seen in the quality of human relationships. This is evident in what seems to me to be a clear violation of the social contract that binds the dead, the living, and the unborn.

Because in fact, what distinguishes agglomerations of individuals from social groups is, first of all, an invisible network. The intersection of value sets, the heritage of things that inspire us, intuitions about what is worthwhile and what isn’t, the big but especially the small narratives of our little lives, humor, minimal politeness, minimal sense of belonging, civilized pride, the quality of compromises between us, deep understanding of certain moral limitations, the average mood in society. All together—and many more—provide the texture of the social world and, to an extent, of reality. But it seems to be a fundamental thing that is compromised in our world. I resist the urge to write these lines in the form of an accusation. I don’t know how to apportion the blame. I will limit myself to calling attention to the fact that a malignant result is as inevitable as the pulmonary effects after prolonged smoking. If you ask me, there is no area of ​​our social life where the cancer eating away at the social fabric is not visible. Without him, there is no life in Romania. Just as there is no school in which she is not seen. No matter how good, with no matter how many gallons. Anyone who thinks that the terrible episode in Pietrisoa is an exception and looks only at the school community there refuses to see the general pathology of our world and schools in general.

I believe that in order to understand each other and take effective (even timid) steps towards a better school, we must approach the many factors that are currently paralyzing us in a comprehensive and intelligent way. And we must understand and publicly admit that:

You cannot have a sound education in a state where those who are supposed to propose public policies with tectonic effect are plagiarists.

You cannot have a healthy education where successful public models despise education.

You cannot have quality education where party interests give the final form to any law.

You can’t get the education you want if you don’t do anything to attract and retain the best.

Where the tenure system clearly protects the weakest teachers.

Where only form is rewarded and where hyperactivity is constantly confused with goodness.

Where success in exams is confused with school performance.

Where the dignity of teachers was trampled, including, but not primarily, themselves.

You cannot get a quality education where the society is almost in moral collapse.

Cases like the one in Pietricheau should not be seen as exceptions, but as fundamental symptoms of our world. Romania in 2023. No one, absolutely no political figures mentioned the fundamental anomie, the only one that, in fact, needs to be solved. Things are condemned (verbally, of course), wooden language at such moments swells like popcorn, we will make and decide and take measures and form a commission and investigation. I mean we have what we need. That is, sit quietly in your seats, such cases are exceptions, we, politicians, have everything under control. Which, of course, is a lie. You, of course, have everything, as you had in the Collective.

but matrix it must be maintained, the illusion and deep powerlessness must somehow be nurtured in the population, which votes once every four or five years.

Today, the Romanian world is a world of survival. Moral response is a luxury that always proves detrimental to the simplest utilitarian calculation. The personal costs may be high and the overall effect zero. However, in the moral arsenal of the species lies this rare but exciting opportunity to reject a crooked world, regardless of the personal cost. A Socrates or a Seneca fascinates us after all this time (though no one will follow them literally) precisely because they are exemplary exponents of the kind of response that breaks through the narrow confines of social utilitarianism. By blithely accepting their own death, they cancel out any economic basis for their decisions. They accept death to illustrate something higher than themselves. In such a catastrophe of calculation lies our brightest humanity.

When the whole world is silent, when the whole world depressingly and cynically participates in the general lie, Socrates puts his own corpse before him. Socrates, Seneca, Jan Palach, Liviu Babesh. A corpse, the dead body of a person who was breathing a few minutes ago. The most important argument that cannot be pretended not to see. Only the Romanian world can. He ignored the dead from the Colectiv, just as he would have ignored the body of the teacher from “Creangă” if the attacker had succeeded in committing the crime. Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro