Teaching is a noble profession whose glory should be restored

Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i (left) shares a light moment with participants of a parents meeting on October 5, 2016 at Kenya Institute of Curriculum Education Development. Earlier this year, Dr Matiang’i expressed disappointment at the state of the system he heads. PHOTO | FRANCIS NDERITU

What you need to know:

  • It is not a given that stuffing more cash into the purses and wallets of teachers will be an enduring solution.
  • It is not possible to turn the clock back, but we can still find ways to honour those who have dedicated their entire lives to the noble calling.

If, as they say, teaching is the noblest profession, then why is it so difficult for a child who has excelled academically to express the wish to become a teacher in later life?

The reason must be that there is very little glamour associated with the job, and the rewards are hardly ever commensurate with the onerous tasks involved.

Even now, when militant unionism has in the last few years elevated the teaching profession to a level worth of real respect, to become a teacher is hardly the first choice of anyone who aspires to wield influence, shape public opinion, win fame or make wealth.

That is why it is said that teaching, like priesthood, is a devotion to a cause, and its own reward.

In other words, nobody enters a classroom to make money; it is not really a material calling.

Only astute teachers do so through moonlighting, which, of course, has a very deleterious effect on the delivery of knowledge.

This is a great pity because the lowly status accorded the profession forces some of the brightest minds to shun what they are best suited for in pursuit of crass materialism.

As a result, the delicate task of imparting knowledge and moulding character is often left to charlatans who can never fit anywhere else.

Unfortunately, such people are allowed to rub shoulders with dedicated professionals, often in the same institutions, with serious consequences.

Earlier this year, Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i expressed disappointment at the state of the system he heads.

DISAPPOINTING RESULTS

He wondered why, despite the billions of shillings allocated to the sector, it keeps producing failures.

While releasing the KCSE examination results, he said that of the 522,870 candidates last year, only 165,766 attained the minimum university qualification, meaning that less than a third had any realistic chance of going on with higher education.

He subsequently instructed his subordinates to find out the reasons for this dire situation.

He also formed a task force to review the curriculum, but this is a subject for another day.

The problem is, weeks to the next KCSE exam, we still do not know why the students did so badly last year, unless the answers were never meant to go public.

It is not a given that stuffing more cash into the purses and wallets of teachers will be an enduring solution.

That would be too simplistic. Nobody can seriously begrudge teachers higher salaries and perquisites for they truly deserve those things, but in itself, this cannot be the answer.

In the early years of independence, the teaching profession was held in very high regard.

HONOUR TEACHERS

Those were the days when dedication to teaching was a life-long affair.

I know of a number of teachers, now deceased, who worked for more than 50 years earning peanuts, yet they never gave up.

Those were the days when a good teacher was an obvious community leader whose word was law and to who discipline was the highest calling.

But, of course, the world has changed tremendously and such people would be the laughing-stock of their peers if they were not languishing in jail for child battery.

It is not possible to turn the clock back, but we can still find ways to honour those who have dedicated their entire lives to the noble calling.

On Wednesday, the World Teachers’ Day was marked without much pomp, but to great effect.

This is because a number of educators were honoured with promotions and other awards, a distinct departure from the past.

One can only hope that in the future, the occasion will be graced by not only the Education minister, but also by the President as a way of showing that our teachers matter.

One of the reasons why too many of them run away from the profession as soon as they can is because they traditionally suffer from poor self-esteem and lack of motivation.

They have no real incentive to behave as role models or to mentor their wards.

But all these are generalisations. Among Kenyan educators are men and women whose work is exemplary, whose only aim in life is to offer knowledge, and to provoke their charges to think, innovate and create.

All they need is for the authorities to create systems that will facilitate them to strive for academic excellence so that they can devote their lives to imparting that knowledge.