Let us honor our teachers for heroic work

On Thursday the world marked the World Teachers’ Day for the 23rd time since its inception. This day (5th October) gives us the opportunity to honour and celebrate the men and women who have made all of us who we are today, and in the process, immensely shaped the societies we live in. It is a day to reflect on their sweat and untold sacrifices in pushing the agenda of education forward. Some play multiple roles, often sacrificing their own private resources to get many learners past the finishing line.

To all the teachers out there, I salute you! You may not have built private empires, but you have surely built and continue to build societies and nations. And to all of you out there aspiring to join the noble profession, I challenge you to take a moment and examine your consciences – determine if you are ready to be teachers. Because teaching is not a job, it is a calling. It’s a calling to carry the futures of our communities, societies, nations and indeed the very future of humanity on one’s shoulders – often with hefty personal sacrifices.

The decision to set aside a day to celebrate teachers is informed by this recognition of the weight of responsibility on their shoulders. This year, we celebrated this day under the theme: ‘Teaching in Freedom, Empowering Teachers’ which is both apt and timely for our country and region. May I therefore take ample time to belabor the two key words in this theme: ‘freedom’ and ‘empowerment’?

Transformation

Let me begin with ‘empowerment’ - what does it mean to empower someone? I ask what some may consider a rhetorical question because the term has become a buzzword, bandied around by people who neither comprehend, nor desire to commit to its true meaning. For starters, the word empowerment comes from power. What does it mean to have power, or to be powerful? It means to be in a position to make decisions that modify other decisions. So what does it mean to empower teachers? It means to transform them from a state of powerlessness to a state of powerfulness.

What do we need to empower teachers? Or put differently, what do teachers need to be empowered? My simple answer is knowledge, knowledge and knowledge! Teachers need opportunities for in-service professional development in a wide range of areas. For instance, teachers need training in alternative methods of disciplining learner after corporal punishment was abolished.

They need regular training in guiding and counselling and in new methods of teaching to meet the multifaceted and rapidly changing needs of their learners. The teachers’ employer ought to provide support in this pursuit and recognise and reward their efforts in acquiring the skills.

Other than knowledge, teachers need a conducive and collegial working environment devoid of undue competition that turns the noble profession into a rat race to achieve high mean scores. The emphasis on quantitative ‘performance’ diverts the focus of teachers from the all-important qualitative performance in their work.

It also undermines collegiality and mutual learning, which would otherwise contribute greatly to the overall competencies of teachers and better learning outcomes for learners. To empower teachers, policies, practices and norms that hinder existence of such environment should be reviewed.

Misconceptions

Equally important and equally misunderstood is freedom. Intellectual freedom is the citadel of creativity and innovation. Teachers deserve pedagogical as well as socio-economic, political and religious freedoms to optimize their productivity. If society imbues teachers with religious dogma, some of which is factually unreasonable; or ethnocentric political subservience; or personal socio-economic instability; or indeed a concoction of some or all the three, they won’t be teachers any more. A teacher in such a state won’t effectively play his/her most important role in education, which is to interact with and create the correct impressions on the impressionable minds of their learners.

Similarly, reducing teachers to some sort of programmed robots, which receive and convey knowledge in prescribed forms, is the antithesis of meaningful education. 

This is even more poignant for us in Kenya as we reform our curriculum with a clear focus on ensuring that the education system produces learners with enhanced problem solving skills. The programming of teachers presumes homogeneity of learners and learning environments, which is a fallacy.

Each class has diverse learners and is situated in a unique learning environment. Teachers must have the freedom to adapt their teaching approaches and materials to their unique realities. Teachers, who are constrained on this front, naturally constrain and saddle the potential of their learners, and by implication, the potential of the entire society.

As we shout bravo to our heroes and heroines tacked away in many hidden corners of this country, but quietly transforming our society one child at a time, it is important for all actors in the education sector to reflect on the encumbrances that hinder effective teaching. It is time to restore the teachers’ authority and dignity.

Dr Manyasa is Uwezo Kenya's Country Manager. emanyasa@twaweza.org