Local TV series portray teaching in bad light

By John Kariuki

Kenya: At least three local television stations have programmes whose themes are education and what goes with it. These are KBC’s Classmates, K24’s Ngubaru Skool and Citizen TV’s Tahidi High programmes. But regrettably, these series give weighty educational issues a flippant and pedestrian rendering that leaves any self-respecting teacher seething with anger.

Salacious stereotypes

These dramas pander on salacious stereotypes that depict teachers as amorous, lazy and generally mediocre. And given that a vast section of our population is functionally illiterate, nothing can do a worse disservice to the teaching profession than these TV entertainment programmes.

KBC’s Classmates seems to be modelled along the popular Mind Your Language TV series set in London that was syndicated by a local television station in the 1990s. But it is a far cry from the multicultural and “worldly” humour of this London programme.

Whereas the London cast comprised of different nationalities competing against each other in murdering the queen’s language with a rich repertoire of grammatical and pronunciation mistakes, under the tutelage of the indefatigable Mr Brown, the local KBC equivalents are a notch lower. The London cast in their comedy of language errors would juxtapose communism and capitalism (hot ideals then) in their stage idiosyncrasies with Mr Brown caught in between their often hilarious exchanges.

But locally televised school children speak English with deliberate Kenyan ethnic twengs for its own sake. It’s a class that is oblivious of all national issues of the day and there is no subtext in all that they do.

Tower of Babel

But what intrigues most is the Classmates’ teacher’s nonchalance and hands off style that leaves his class in bedlam. Every episode is a tower of Babel that depicts the teacher as ineffectual and vain with little class control or higher ideals beyond his ruffian students.

Cheating in class assignments and exams is the norm rather than the exception in Classmates. In Ngubaru Skool, the stage teacher comes across as unkempt and thuggish, giving teachers a bad name.

As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words and the depicting of teachers this way reinforces a sublime and erroneous view of tutors on impressionable pupils and gullible parents.

This school’s rough hewn antics depict the provision of education as an extremely casual enterprise. Tahidi High breaks from these pedestrian scripts. Every episode has a tangible story line. But in its apparent sophistication of plot, this series imparts the most subtle insults on the teaching profession that are often delivered with artistic panache! So, within the sunny cast are teachers given to whiffs of scandal.

There are unmistakable moments when the Tahidi teachers go beyond the limits of decency by chasing errant students to the washrooms, hitting the bottle too hard, and (cunningly implied) canoodling with their charges.

The school principal, the irascible Mr Tembo, adopts a master-servant approach to his teachers. He never consults or asks his teachers anything.

Stereotypical

In fact, he portrays a stereotypical view of the bossy head teacher who routinely lords it over his teachers! Whereas Tembo’s demeanour would have worked wonders in the last century, it can only assure one of instant disaster today.

And herein lies the insult of visiting archaic stereotypes on the modern image of teachers in front of a viewership that may not discern the generational differences.

Yet the teachers’ unions, the Ministry of Education and the TSC have never raised a voice against Mr Tembo’s unfortunate exploits.

The depiction of teachers as mediocre did not start with the TV series, but has been an entrainment industry staple for long. While it was fashionable, the Reddykyulass comedy group would occasionally make skits about teachers. This troupe would cast teachers as sloppy dressers, phonetically challenged and generally as dimwitted people.

And Teacher Wanjiku, a comedienne playing the role of a female teacher would wow the country by her sloppy dressing with clashing colours and a shrill, loud voice. It was her stage habit to “shrub” and give vague meanings to all words that she would utter.

But above the whoops of laughter at her comic antics, a keen observer could not help but see audiences that were dazed at the demystification of their teachers - a therapeutic feat in a world full of personal and official failures. Deflating teachers as a TV entrainment genre is bound to have a wide viewership; everybody has passed through their hands. But even then, the programmes’ producers and directors should accord the teaching profession some decency, accuracy and balance on stage.

They owe Kenyans some artistic honesty.

Mr Kariuki teaches at Nyandarua High School, Ol Kalou

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