The council will protect teachers from tears, threats, and dismissals for photos on social media.

After school began to be perceived by society solely as a provider of educational services, rather than an institution where children are not only taught but also educated, the foreign word "bulling" took hold. In Russian, this is called travley (traveling).

Along with it, ordinary consumer terrorism has infiltrated Russian schools. It has flourished in parent chat rooms. The older generation believes they have the right to dictate to teachers how and what to teach their offspring, what tone to use with children, and prohibits scolding and punishment, even giving bad grades that threaten to ruin the school record of a "good" boy or girl.

But such situations aren't limited to the classroom. They extend far beyond the school, intruding into the personal lives of teachers.

Let's recall the sensational story of Barnaul teacher Tatyana Kuvshinnikova. She became famous nationwide after being fired for a photo in a swimsuit. Kuvshinnikova is a winter swimmer and a hard-working athlete. The photo was taken after competitions in support of the Universiade.

In the Novosibirsk region, a Russian man considered a photo of a young teacher, 25-year-old Marina Lvova, embracing her husband on their wedding day to be overly intimate. He wrote an anonymous letter to the Ministry of Education, complaining about the teacher's inappropriate behavior. She was forced to justify herself, write an explanatory note, and delete the photo from her social media account.

Humorous videos about everyday work life also turned into a scandal for 23-year-old Darina Schastnaya from St. Petersburg. School administration noticed the videos, forcing her to terminate her employment contract.

"A teacher owes everyone something and has no right to a private life," Darina told Komsomolskaya Pravda about her departure from school. "They told me that with my videos, I devalued the status of a teacher, since these 'antics' violate the moral code. This situation has left me completely disillusioned with the education system."

A fourth-grade student at another St. Petersburg school cursed his teacher of 40 years, Liya Moiseyevna Yuryeva, at the end of the previous school year. However, it wasn't him who was summoned to the principal's office, but the teacher. The foul-mouthed student's father had filed a complaint against her with the district education department. Yuryeva was suspended, and the entire class, on the eve of their elementary school graduation, was left without a teacher.

The complaint: the homeroom teacher allegedly hit a child and poured water on a phone. According to Lia Moiseyevna, she offered the overexcited boy some water, and he responded by throwing a glass and abusing her. Interestingly, this isn't the first time the bully from Class 4A has acted out, but previously, problems were resolved through dialogue with parents, and complaints to the district education department hadn't reached that point.

Recently, a Yekaterinburg court ordered a 26-year-old physics teacher to pay a student 120,000 rubles in moral damages and sentenced him to 1.5 years of community service. More precisely, the former schoolteacher. Now a young man with a degree in teaching, he installs intercoms. He has no plans to appeal the ruling or return to school.

Unable to contain himself, a new teacher threw a pen at noisy eighth-graders from the back of the class. The teenagers no longer responded to repeated warnings. After the bell rang, one of them, poking the teacher, tried to start a fight, but was grabbed by the scruff of the neck and forcibly taken to the principal's office.

It seemed the incident was over. The principal is the student's final authority and an unshakable figure. That's how it used to be. But now the teenager demanded to see the classroom CCTV footage of the pen hitting his shoulder. He had bruises documented at the hospital, caused by the teacher squeezing his arm while dragging him to the principal. He also stayed home from school for a month, claiming to be depressed. What follows is a police report, an investigation, and a trial.

Colleagues from Rossiyskaya Gazeta, reporting on this case, raised a question. Both the court and the prosecutor's office promptly reported on the teacher's closed trial on their Telegram channels, but said nothing about what measures would be taken against the eighth-grader who swore and insulted the teacher, or against his parents, who considered their son's behavior normal.

Another example. In August, a Moscow woman met her child's homeroom teacher in the gym shower, filmed her, and demanded an apology for being naked in public. The story was publicized by the teacher's friend. It reached the highest levels.

State Duma Deputy Speaker Boris Chernyshov even appealed to Education Minister Sergei Kravtsov to legislate a ban on officials and activists harassing teachers for their social media posts, unless they violate the law. The deputy demanded the development of a special manual for school principals preventing them from violating teachers' personal boundaries.

Perhaps it was the State Duma deputy's advocacy that prompted the Ministry of Education to create a council to protect the professional honor and dignity of teachers. The ministry announced its creation on September 16. The body will review complaints on complex situations submitted by regional commissions and issue recommendations. Federal subjects have already been required to create their own commissions to resolve disputes with parents and students. However, no deadline has been set for their convening.

Incidentally, the current Law on Education (Article 47. Legal Status of Teaching Staff. Rights and Freedoms of Teaching Staff, Guarantees for Their Implementation) clearly and explicitly states the existence of such commissions "at the local level." It remains to be seen whether, with the emergence of a new advisory body under the auspices of the ministry, the commissions will have to be re-established or whether the existing ones will be honored.

The main council included representatives from the Russian Ministry of Education, the All-Russian Trade Union of Education, federal and regional authorities, and leading experts, whose names, unfortunately, we were unable to find. However, it is known that the co-chairs were Minister of Education Sergei Kravtsov and the Chair of the Trade Union of Education, Larisa Solodilova .

However, the news of the council's creation was not universally received. Dmitry Kazakov, the chairman of another trade union, "Teacher," a history and social studies teacher with 17 years of experience, is skeptical.

"I can't even imagine how this centralized organization can help in any way, or what its functions will be. It's a completely populist thing! Officials want to show they care about teachers—that's all. We often hear that parents create the most problems for teachers, but that's not true. Officials create the most problems. And if we're talking about councils, they should be in schools. We have the Law on Education, which contains two articles that call for the creation of commissions in schools to resolve conflict situations. Another question is who will work there if a teacher takes on two or three full-time positions, teaching ten lessons a day. They have no time for a commission. That means only vice-principals and principals will remain. And these commissions will be pointless; they won't have any authority. To reduce conflicts, teachers should work a normal workload for a normal salary no less than the regional average. Then they'll be able to negotiate, and the teacher will have the opportunity to defend themselves. “And now the teacher can’t lift his head,” Dmitry Kazakov explained his point of view.

Numerous cases of unfair disciplinary action and scandals over photos on social media are examples of this.

"Regarding educational services, this view of school has truly been instilled and shaped in us over the past 20, even 30 years. Schools operate like any other commercial, everyday enterprise (for example, a hair salon – Ed.), and follow the same rules. Therefore, it's natural that people develop a perception of teachers as service providers, service personnel. But both teachers and students can face bullying from teachers – no one is safe. Conflicts happen. There's no society without conflict. And they end tragically, as in Yekaterinburg, because everyone is on edge. Teachers, in particular, are overloaded and placed in intolerable conditions," said the chairman of the "Teacher" trade union.

Young teachers active online are the most likely to encounter bullying. And it's not just posts on personal VKontakte or Odnoklassniki pages. Parents attack their homeroom teachers via instant messaging apps, evenings and nights, disregarding the fact that the teacher may have a family and free time. Calls, complaints, insults. The result is abandonment of teaching, forced layoffs, and... staffing shortages.

We believe that raising the prestige of the profession, promoting a positive attitude, and repositioning schools from providers of educational services to institutions that not only teach but also educate will help stem the flow of indignation stemming from the "teacher's duty" and "it's everyone's fault." And councils and commissions should certainly include not only officials, trade union members, and "mythical" experts, but also young teachers, parents, high school students, and lawyers.