There wasn’t much to celebrate on Teachers’ Day, November 25: over 100 teachers have been killed or have vanished in Aceh, Maluku and Irian Jaya during the ongoing strife in the provinces. Small, skimmed salaries, corrupt process of recruitment and appointments and allotted rice that is rotten only add to teachers’ woes.

So many noble titles are bestowed upon them—the most famous being ‘the heroes without medals of