Perpetuated Suffering: Social Injustice in Liberian Teachers’ Lives

Abstract

This chapter asks how Liberian teachers in an early post-war context sought to maintain their own well-being despite the fragility of the Liberian state education system.1 In accordance with the vertical case study approach, this research analyzes connections across international, national, and local levels that form during a humanitarian crisis and continue into the period of post-war reconstruction. Similar to Mendenhall and Zakharia in this section, I am interested in the friction within and among these groups of actors that arises from their “heterogeneous and unequal encounters” (Tsing 2005, 1). In particular, I examine how connections between inter/national governmental and nongovernmental institutions lead to the formation of policy that may inadvertently perpetuate suffering among war-affected teachers through very limited compensation policies. When these global policies about teacher compensation become “localized,” first in national ministries of education and then in the lives of teachers, they create new forms of suffering for Liberian teachers that reinforce historical inequalities and marginalize teachers as professionals and as civil servants. The chapter begins by examining the policies of international institutions involved in the field of education in emergencies and shows how the connections among the Liberian Ministry of Education (MOE) have directly shaped post-war teacher compensation efforts. It then moves to the local level to show how extremely low salaries, the lack of housing, and the dearth of material and training support affect teachers’ perceptions that they are being treated in a just manner by their government.