adminStories by Morris Mtisi
MM: Mr Shumba welcome once again head-to-head. I receive countless calls congratulating you for speaking to the public on issues Head-to- Head brings to your attention. Allow me to thank you too for squeezing in time out of your busy schedule to answer questions to do with your job and office in the province.
PED: Thank you. You are most welcome.MM: Mr Shumba when I was a classroom practitioner once upon a time at a certain school, I was also head of English Department, I asked an inspector on an inspection mission, “How do I teach Literature, especially Shakespeare (I was teaching Merchant of Venice) to pupils who have no clue what Shakespearean language is, very slow learners who are as bad as, I think I used the word brainless at the time? He advised me confidently, “Use abridged series as their set books.” Well, I thought that was nonsense and I laboured to tell him so without offending him. Mr Shumba do you still have inspectors in your inspectorate team like that; inspectors who themselves are as ignorant about their subject matter as the teachers they are supposed to inspect? If so what do you do about them in order to make sure they are part of the solution to dismal pass rates, and not part of the problem? I appeal for an honest answer.
PED: Thank you once again. To be frank we do not have such inspectors. Remember these inspectors are subject specialists who have practiced as teachers. They have risen through the ranks to these posts. We also have staff development programmes for them so that they develop in terms of current skills and approaches. They deliver whatever advice they have with a human face. The aim is to improve the system and not to discourage the teachers.
MM: I admire your professionalism to protect your team, but I want you to know, and you better believe this: teachers on the ground have a very different story about your inspectors. Not all of them of course but many enough to stir serious concern. They, including your DEOs, teachers say, do a very visible job in mounting inspecting blitz in the schools, quite many of them they dare call literal school raids, to see if teachers are doing their job. I have no problem with that myself. Thank God I am out of mainstream teaching. But certainly there is a difference between monitoring and or evaluating outcomes. Would it be very wrong for teachers who confide in me to say your DEOs and inspectors are more like professional policemen and women and not necessarily knowledgeable role models and pedagogic advisors who add value to the teaching-learning value chain? Are they, Mr Shumba, themselves pedagogic experts in their areas, officers full of answers and suggestions to reduce or end the problems of struggling (polite word to mean incompetent) teachers? Do they assist teachers or simply inspect them?
PED: The whole purpose is to improve the quality of teaching and learning. I believe these inspectors are not really policing but monitoring with the aim of assisting where necessary. With the complaints we get, it is necessary that teachers should be monitored. The benchmark is the Director’s circular 36 of 2006 which should be seen as giving the minimum expectations so the teacher can actually evaluate themselves against this. But not all can be honest about themselves. Hence inspectors go to assist teachers in terms of the quality and quantity of work.
MM: I agree that teachers must be monitored. There is no question about that. The question is, ‘if the monitoring of teachers is effective; why then this perennial dismal national pass-rate?’ Another interesting question! Mr Shumba, ‘have you ever dismissed or recommended the dismissal of a teacher for inability to deliver; sheer inability to make things happen in the classroom?’ You do have many hopeless cases in these schools, don’t you? Why do you keep them there? If you can’t drive a bus, the bus-owner ‘fires you’ if I can use that common error and cliché. Why don’t you dismiss teachers who have no business in the classroom? And only ‘fire’ them when they sexually molest one school girl, instead of when they put a whole generation of learners at the risk of all failing their exams, wasting their time and school fees?
PED: The training of teachers is a mandate of another ministry and I will not speak of another ministry, so I will not speak on that. What we get are certified teachers and we need to assist them in the delivery of effective lessons. Hence we do have the responsibility of shaping and sharpening them. We need to differentiate between a criminal offence and lack of appropriate approach. When a person does harm to children, this hinders the child’s ability to learn and we need to get rid of them. But when he/she fails to deliver, we sharpen them so as to inculcate better mastery.
MM: I hear you loud and clear Mr Shumba. But if there is need to sharpen and shape these qualified teachers coming into the system, common sense suggests that there is something wrong already, is there not? How do qualified teachers lack appropriate approach? Qualified teachers ought to demonstrate to you, show you, how learning outcomes are achieved, not the other way round. Imagine doctors lacking appropriate approach! What would happen? Coffins all over the hospitals and not recovered patients walking back home. Anyway, let us talk teachers’ sexual misconduct. Are you aware that some of these male teachers suffer from daylight seduction from female-student sex maniacs, most of them as young as 15, 16, 17 who literally drag these teachers on? I’m not justifying roughnecks in schools but clearly the young girls must check their libidos as well, don’t you think? Would that be an insinuating circumstance in deciding the fate of a young male teacher caught up on the wrong side of his job?
PED: I do not subscribe to this seduction theory. From a Biblical point of view, people have been told of the glories in heaven but they continue to sin. So the teachers should really move out of this self-aggrandizing position as cocks. They should be mature enough to understand that these are children who can play with fire. And they (teachers) are adults who have the knowledge of being young and being old. If these teachers want to remain young, they have no place in our classrooms. They should be adult enough to tell the youths to grow up responsibly. If they cannot help to shape these children into proper citizens but assist in destroying the youths, then they have no business in education and should be given the fastest exit from the system. We cannot destroy a nation because someone has been seduced by a child.
MM: You certainly have not answered my question whether you are aware that there are female student sex-maniacs in your schools, who dangle carrots too near the young male teachers? You also did not answer if in a hearing there is an insinuating circumstance considerable in reprimanding the culprit-teacher? My interpretation of your answer however, is that you are aware. Anyway, this brings me to my last question sir: UBUNTHU in the schools! We hear a lot about this Hunhu-Ubunthu clarion call to such an extent you can almost say it has become Ministry of Education slogan. How serious is anybody about this call for Ubunthu in the schools Mr Shumba? Are there any concrete programmes in the schools to curb the menace of the fierce moral decay we see in the schools today? Do you have one example of such programmes”? Or must we expect continuous permanently cosmetic appeals for ubunthu without real results of structured or institutionalized moral rearmament? Surely ‘telling’ the students, “Have ubunthu, ubunthu and ubunthu” will not engender outcomes! There are many ‘outsiders’ who have excellent ideas to nurture ubunthu in schools…much much better than ‘famous’ organizations flooded in the schools promoting more moral decay in the name of curbing it. We need new players in these interventions sir, don’t we? The old guard/ traditional organizations and clubs all over the schools today, some running into decades operating in the schools, have totally failed to change the behavior of students. I won’t name and shame any. You know many youth organizations sir, clubs that are more of a nuisance in the schools than intervention sources fighting moral decay. Instead they have, in my opinion, made it worse in a number of ways. Why don’t you invite ‘tenders’ from new players with new ideas and wisdom? It is not foolish to change the seed if you want a different harvest, is it?
PED: I do not blame anyone for moral decadence. We have seen it and it should really be everyone’s concern. We are playing our part but if the same society blames the school system will celebrate at people indulging in nude dances, urinating in public and obscene and foul language, I believe we are alone in the fight. We will continue fighting though. I believe the new curriculum will address this issue but society also has to examine itself and together we should see change.
MM: Surely somebody must be blamed for children’s moral decay. We cannot pass back the blame to society when we claim schools are centres of all-round education which includes moral rearmament. If schools teach students to pass examinations, surely they can also teach them how to grow into responsible adulthood; the Ubunthu we make song about. Society includes these schools, does it not? Society trusts schools create new desirable creatures out of children. We cannot push back the blame to hide our own failure. What are the programmes that address moral rearmament? Where are they? We need serious behavioural change lessons in the schools, in class, in the curriculum, not social clubs perpetrating social entertainment or organized promiscuity. If schools, where modern youths spend most of their child life can’t provide that sanctuary, they have failed to play even their part. That is my submission. I hope the new curriculum as you say will be able to address Ubunthu in schools and stop it from being empty wishful thinking as we have seen with many other wonderful ideas that bore and still bear neither fruit nor efficacy.
Mr Shumba it is always a pleasure talking to you. Again thank you for your time and wisdom. All my readers are benefitting immensely from answers to questions they are not privileged to ask you. Soon I will invite reasonable questions from teachers to forward to you without revealing their identity.
PED: Thank you. Let us all struggle to perfect the system so as to get quality teaching and learning.
MM: You cannot be closer to the truth sir. Another end to another head-to-head conversation for another week! Thank you Mr Shumba.
PED: You are ever welcome.
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