The other day I was sitting and listened to P1 Debate on DR, where they discussed the lack of teachers in Denmark.
It made me think about our own society. Because lack of learning can affect a society for decades, as primary school is the foundation for almost everything that comes after.
The other day I was sitting and listened to P1 Debate on DR, where they discussed the lack of teachers in Denmark.
It made me think about our own society. Because lack of learning can affect a society for decades, as primary school is the foundation for almost everything that comes after.
Because if Denmark has a serious problem with a shortage of teachers, how serious is the problem in Greenland?
IMAK has several times called for a guard. There is a shortage of around 200 trained teachers. It may not sound like much, but we have around 900 trained primary school teachers. This corresponds to the fact that we are missing more than one in five teachers.
At the same time, our children are already taught by around 200 unskilled part-time teachers and 200 unskilled substitutes. And the problem is getting bigger: Nearly 140 teachers are expected to retire in the next few years, while only about 20 new teachers are being trained each year.
The seriousness can hardly be emphasized enough. Forid it is not just a problem for primary schools. It is a problem for Greenland’s future. What does it do to society?
We talk again and again about what Greenland has to live on. Tourism, fishing, raw materials are mentioned as our future opportunities. But what does that mean concretely?
Tourism is not just more tourists. It requires sailors on tour boats, guides, receptionists, waiters and cooks – but also managers, economists, IT specialists and other highly educated people.
Fishing is not just dinghy fishermen, factory workers and trawler crews. The fisheries of the future will also require production technologists, automation technicians, machinists, electricians and engineers. The same applies to the raw materials industry.
But who will educate all these people?
This is where the teacher shortage becomes a question of our development model itself. If a large proportion of our children do not get the education they need, we also risk missing the people who will later run the companies, develop the technology, build the infrastructure and create the new jobs.
We are only about 57,000 people and the population is not growing. We therefore cannot afford to lose human resources already in primary school.
We can build airports, harbors and hydroelectric plants. We can invest billions and create new companies. But buildings and companies do not alone create a modern Greenland. Humans do.
So what exactly is our vision? Where is the debate about our society, the debate about visions for Greenland’s future, the debate about what future our children will grow up to.
Which Greenland will our children grow up in in 10, 20 or 30 years – and do we have the teachers today to educate them for it?
An old saying goes: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best thing is today.
The same applies to our children.
Because the Greenland we will have in 20 years will largely be created in the classrooms today. The question is what does that future look like?
