Sundaymail EditorToday’s instalment is a little encomium to civilisation’s all-time heroes.
It is dedicated to a breed of men young and old, women young and old. It is dedicated to that breed of people who since time immemorial have committed themselves to the mental liberation, moral edification, spiritual upliftment and cultural civilisation of humankind.
They are perhaps the only people whose dedication and sacrifice are an everyday undertaking and continue seamlessly through life from the cradle to the grave.
Today is the International Day for Teachers.
I felt compelled to honour them on their special day. Thus whatever negative I might say in the course of this piece should not detract from the respect and honour I pay them. It should be taken as incidental to the craft of critical analysis which I pretend to practise.
It would be unlike me not to find a shortcoming even as I indulge in praise.
The theme for the commemoration is apt; “Invest in the future, invest in teachers.”
Everyday I marvel at the talent and skill of a dedicated teacher. In particular, I look in awe at the infant teacher who opens the eye of what must be a little blind fellow save for the little that the baby gets from the immediate family, especially the mother, from birth.
The family provides the primary influence, which is natural, natural in its original botanical sense, before this semi-human is released to the teacher to open his or her eyes to humanity, to the wider world.
A E I O U. Counting little sticks or stones up to 5 10 15 20 … 50. Bringing letters together to make the first syllable – ba ma da, and then baba, umama, amai.
I am bowled over by the patience, the tolerance for incompetence, slovenliness, clumsiness, proneness to play and a short concentration span which call on the teacher to be extremely resourceful and entertaining to keep the brats from sleep.
The fellows also have the propensity to mess themselves up, lose their shoes or tie or hat or socks. Most can’t tell which shoe is for the left foot. They put on what they call a “banana” these days.
Fellow kids laugh, and the fellow is hugely embarrassed and cries.
Having put the shoe on the correct foot, the fellow has no clue how to tie the shoelaces. Hey, hey!
That bids me pay special tribute to the womenfolk, the Eve that God gave us.
This might not apply universally, but my experience in our paternalistic Zimbabwe is that this task is mainly left to women, who invariably get the least remuneration for opening our eyes.
They give us teachers, lawyers, nurses, doctors, rocket scientists, geologists, astronauts, journalists and engineers, and everything else that makes this world worth living and dying for.
I have said teachers are the greatest liberators of them all because even those who go to war to fight for our political independence must have some basic education.
In the case of Zimbabwe, some of those who fought for our liberation, still came back to return to school. After all the dicing with death in the war and ultimate victory over the settler enemy, they still felt incomplete to survive or live secure lives in an independent Zimbabwe without education.
Kimani Maruge of Kenya holds the Guinness World Records as the oldest student to enrol for primary education at the age of 84. That was on January 12, 2004.
Four years later in 2008, he withdrew from school and relocated to a home for senior citizens, according to Wikipedia. Later the same year he enrolled for Grade 6 at another primary school.
I am imagining here that his teacher must have been a young lady, probably a granddaughter. Circumstances dictated that she must open the eyes of this ancient to be able to communicate in silence with people far away through reading.
But the tale of teachers is not all romance. And circumstances have changed mightily since I attended primary school in the last century.
Back then I doubt that teachers earned princely salaries. Not to mention that this was Rhodesia where even the civil servant in an urban area was among the lowest paid.
In rural Mberengwa where I grew up, the teacher and the nurse were the only envied professionals. Then there were bus drivers and their conductors who performed scintillating stunts of jumping out of the bus before it could come to a standstill, or jumping on to the carrier as the bus was leaving the bus stop, and then sidling in through the partially open door or window when the bus was already throwing up plumes of dust as it sped away.
We were fascinated.
Back then, teachers and pupils walked to and from school on foot. It was the odd businessman here and there, or the headmaster, who managed to buy a Peugeot 404.
Old as it was, it became the talk of the community. It was a rare spectacle, a lifetime achievement. We were naturally afraid of the machine and scampered away at the sight of its approach.
It was such a rarity that it was not uncommon late at night as we sat around a log-fire to be able to tell with 95 percent certainty whose car was coming along from seeing the beam of light piercing the dark sky.
This is all to say, the issue of salaries was never an issue in those golden days. Teachers and nurses lived the good life. We all wanted to be one of them. They were the good example of a successful child, the role model.
The teacher was the source of knowledge in the community. Male or female, they were greatly respected. They were allowed to beat bad if we misbehaved. If word got to your parents that you had been beaten by the teacher for mischief, the punishment continued at home.
It forced us to behave, to listen, to concentrate, to want to be educated as our teacher. We were the living image of the adage that it takes a community to bring up a child. You belonged to everybody.
Everyone older than you was always a sister, a brother, a mother, a father, a grandmother or grandfather. It was only very close relatives you knew whom you could distinguish as uncle, aunt or cousin.
I can fully appreciate the stress and the challenges of the modern day teacher, especially those in urban areas or those out of mission schools in rural areas.
He has to teach pupils or students who suddenly have human rights, who cannot be beaten for mischief or not doing their homework. He must contend with parents who come to accost him for their child’s poor performance.
Competition for the “luxuries” of urban life is tough. A vehicle is not for the headmaster or headmistress anymore. Whereas there were no TV sets then, today it must not only be colour but a 48-inch plasma.
Whereas back then food was readily available from the field and there were no rates or rent to be paid, the teacher in an urban setting must fend for himself as if he had Bill Gates’ wealth. The bills of urban life don’t discriminate according to net pay.
One must understand them when they plead for higher pay or seek to coax incentives from equally struggling parents.
But, as Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa confessed recently, there is no money to meet teachers’ demands. Civil servants salaries alone gobbled 76 percent of State revenues. He said he was embarrassed.
That’s how bad the situation is.
Yet we cannot lose faith in our teachers to deliver. Have a merry day.
Joram Nyathi is the Zimpapers Group Political Editor
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