Are our teachers qualified to teach?

Post Correspondent
RECENT press reports in South Africa make interesting reading. News24 says that a South African think-tank carried out a research on the efficacy of Mathematics teachers in one province.
Its results were depressing but to me as an educator I wasn’t surprised but it set me thinking . . . If these teachers found it hard to cope with the higher level questions of a Matriculation Mathematics paper, how do these sorry images of teachers carry out their teaching duties?
One must never discount the seemingly slow learners not to be good teachers but questions will always linger in the minds of the discerning scholar and analyst.

Imagine someone finished O level in 1984 and trained as a teacher. He has been teaching Grade 4 since 1988. That person is unlikely to tackle a Form 4 Mathematics paper and produce good answers unless he has not stopped reading and practicing Mathematics.

A Sports Science expert, Sydney Togara, said in his line of work, there is a law of reversibility; if you are too idle for a long time, you become redundant. We don’t want our teachers to go the way the dinosaur took in the course of their prime years.

A person sits for a Mathematics paper many times and finally the “gods” smile upon him with the result that he becomes a trainee teacher specializing in Mathematics. Will that person be a good teacher of the subject? I have heard the gripes of students at secondary school on teachers who get into a classroom and use the example that is in the textbook to explain the mathematical concepts.

Attempts by the children to get better clarification from the teacher are met with stoic bellicosity. One can see that the teacher is a half baked classroom practitioner in the field of Mathematics.

This is not peculiar to Mathematics.
Some time ago, I attended an English and Literature workshop and among the things the facilitator did was to administer a spelling test or should we call it a quiz to the gathered language experts.

It was a routine spelling exercise but the findings were horrendous by any other definition. Out of a possible 20/20 no-one got everything correct; we expect that of course but some teachers had 7/20; to me, that teacher will have a lot of problems marking essays and award a mark that is consistent with an average marking scheme.

Now, what made such a horrible teacher to be an English language teacher when his knowledge of rules of grammar and spelling is suspect? Some of these teachers are proud holders of Diplomas of Education and degrees. Are these teachers competent to teach children for them to pass?

At yet another History workshop where we were analysing the previous examination, I got the shock of my life. Before 2003, there was a component of analysis in Paper 1 where candidates had to exhibit their critical analysis and evaluative skills. It had six marks. The facilitator asked some teachers to respond to the questions and he awarded marks to the answers. Surprisingly, some teachers’ responses obtained marks as low as 1/6. Against such a background, how will that teacher effectively teach a student to get the maximum mark expected?

Chasing the wind, I guess.
I believe other teachers have similar tales. When a teacher teaches the wrong concepts to children, it is a permanent injury. Writing a business letter requires skills that have to be honed from primary school. There is a difference between an Re and Ref but the latter is commonly used by students meaning to say somewhere down the line, someone did not correctly teach that aspect. I believe, there are many instances when one can deduce that a particular problem is a result of a teacher who did not teach well. Sadly, pupils or people in general, do not forget wrong concepts in any academic discipline.

The South African scenario must be a wake up call to our authorities given that today, many people who fill the gaps of those who are on leave are graduates or diploma holders. Granted, they say Mathematics is a difficult subject. It is a fallacy that has scared millions of children over the years much to the detriment of human development over time. No subject is inherently easy, mark my words.

It must be borne in mind that the research was a one off which may not lead us to say with absolute certainty that the bulk of Mathematics teachers find level 4 questions difficult but it is wise to get back to the training institutions and find out why some teachers do not perform to their clients’ expectations.

By ‘clients’ we refer to the students, parents, the wider community, the nation and the international community at large. Zimbabwean personnel are in demand the world over thanks to the efforts of the Zanu-PF Government education policies at the dawn of independence in 1980.

These clients have their expectations which must be met head-on for the teaching profession to continue to be relevant in the socio-politico-economic fundamentals of the country.

In the army, lack of skill results in casualties; to off set that, the army lines up a number of refresher courses for the soldiers to be ready for battle at any one given time. In business, lack of fresh ideas has an inevitable consequence of liquidation and massive unemployment.
What happens to education when there is a dearth of fresh ideas? Remember, our aim is to reach the 100% threshold.