As I stated in an earlier article on this subject matter, no nation that wishes to grow will trifle with its teachers. The teacher is the bedrock of virtually every developmental stride one can think about. The children represent the hope of the country; the future. In the past, it was the sole responsibility of parents to train their children to become responsible members of the society. At that time, the father showed the boy child how to hunt, farm, carve wood, make boats or whatever he was an adept at. The mother also taught the girl child how to cook, process various food items, clean the house, do farm work and other house chores. As we all know, this system made it possible and practicable for the community’s future to be guaranteed.
The effectiveness of what we now call archaic form of education is amazing. It was so successful that it produced no unemployed person. Everyone was a master of one craft or the other. Every child learnt a number of survival skills before the age of maturity, which was as low as age 15 or thereabouts.
A strong wind of change blew across our land and carried away all that we were known for. The new social structure is one in which the child is born by the parents, but largely trained by strangers whom the parents have to trust for the proper upbringing of their children. This is how serious the teaching profession is. It is a vocation that carries a lot of responsibility. The teacher has a responsibility not only to the parents of the children, but to the children themselves. They also have a responsibility to the society at large.
In the past era, if a generation of children turned out to be lazy and rascally, it was a community problem that would be tackled with all seriousness. Elders would find ways of jolting the parents and making them live up to their calling as parents.
However, in this era, teachers, more than any other group, should be held responsible for the decadence and delinquency we see among children everywhere. What this means is that the teacher’s job is more important than that of a medical doctor, a legal practitioner, an engineer, a businessman, a banker, and so on.
If we expect so much from teachers, what is the system doing to ensure they are properly equipped for their tasking job? It is only the person to whom much is given that much should be expected from. What we reap from our farm is a reflection of what we planted and how we tended the plants. To expect a great harvest from a small effort is what the Igbo call “anya ukwu”, that is, covetousness.
The doctor’s training is intensive and thorough because he is being prepared to deal directly with human life. A lot of attention is paid to every element of his training. Only highly qualified people are employed to teach medical students. The faculties of medicine are equipped with current gadgets to update both students and lecturers on current trends. Exchange programmes, field experience trips and other well thought-out strategies are adopted to prepare them for life as doctors. When they are certified fit to practice as doctors, their remuneration is incomparable to most other professionals. They are given many benefits that are not available to other government employees. When doctors speak, usually the government listens because they are regarded as valuable citizens.
A visit to any bank impresses it upon you that bankers are important people that cannot be toyed with. The environment is conducive and their remuneration is consoling.
On the other hand, the teacher that produced the doctor, engineer, architect, and so on is not treated so honourably. The problem starts with his training. The teacher training institutes are not well equipped with the result that you can see graduates of Computer Science who cannot really handle the computer because the training they received was not practical since only as few as four systems or less were available for the entire department or faculty. Of course, they will still pass the courses and end up being certified as computer experts who will serve as computer teachers to the younger generation.
This anomaly is prominent in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and other practical-oriented subjects. Again, the number of people that are admitted to study educational courses far exceeds the carrying capacity of the institutions, thus watering down the quality of education they can receive. By the magic of the Nigerian factor, virtually everyone passes and the system is flooded with semi-literate individuals parading as teachers. Why then won’t we have half-baked graduates at every level of our sick educational system?
I am usually shocked to see teachers employed to teach prospective teachers who do not have basic communication skills and lack logical reasoning ability. It is among this group that you will see those who are gurus in the art of extorting money from students in order to give them unmerited marks. They grow rich and change cars like clothes but are very poor as mind or character moulders. Teachers like this are products of a deformed system. Why they must be given the licence to go into the schools and destroy the face of the future is what beats me.
This year’s Teachers’ Day has come and gone. In some states, it was celebrated with pomp and pageantry while others did theirs in whispers. However, there is great need for our government at various levels to stop seeing teaching and learning as a political issue. Serious attention must be paid to the myriad of problems bedevilling the teaching profession in Nigeria. It covers poor salary structure, unhealthy learning environment, training deficiency, lack of effective supervision, etc.
My prayer is that by the next Teachers’ Day, at least some of these problems would have received reasonable attention by the powers that be.
NNENNA Ihebom
