adminMorris Mtisi
WHEN I was a practising teacher once upon a time before quitting the noble profession, I never, even after knowing I had done my utmost to assist my students to pass examinations, claimed I had produced the results. I wish I had. Today, especially with the notorious home-based extra lessons competitions among all of them, teachers are not modest about their contribution towards their students’ passes.
They are very quick to claim the credit and visibly brag about their accomplishment: “I produced 10, 20, 30 As and so many Bs,” you hear them in corridors and meetings. Why not? True to the fact they would have worked really hard and deserve praise. It is not often that a class or school achieves so many passes where others have only zero percent pass rate to show. But the reality of the matter is that teaching is like a relay-race, where the runners hand over the baton to the next teammate involved in the same race. It is a collective effort won or lost collectively. Indeed the first runner or runners determine the success or failure of the next one or next ones.
The analogy made here is a very simple one. No one teacher makes a sole impact on the performance of a child. While it is human to claim all the glory when a pupil excels, nothing can be further from the real truth. Never forget the Form I teacher who supplied the basics of skills, facts or knowledge, the Form Two and Three teachers and the rest of them. Everyone ran the race, of course some better than others, but the race called teaching is not run by one teacher. That would be to believe what we all know to be a fallacy.
Many “teachers” contribute to the ultimate result of students, often the “unseen” or “unsung” heroes and heroines having done much better than the winners of prizes and praise. Have you ever imagined how many other teachers assist “your” students during school holidays, for example?
It is a bit like a man who believes he alone is responsible for his wife’s pregnancy, forgetting the woman is as much responsible as the father of the house. No child is a one-parent’s product. But we are often foolish enough to talk about single parents, aren’t we, yet we know there is nothing really called a single parent.
No one can ever be a parent alone. If you are single, you cannot be a parent, can you? Single parenting is quite something different for it refers to the business of fending for your off-spring.
Even the headmasters who boast they produced strings of distinctions know that while what they are saying may be the truth, it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Soldiers too fight bloody battles for which their commanders, some of them disgraceful cowards, win awards of merit and medals of heroic bravery. Such is life. But the human brain is smart enough to know better than that, is it not? No army commander fights a war alone. And reasonable commanders recognise the invaluable role played by every individual soldier.
This discourse is not meant to narrow the effect or value of administrative leadership or suggest that there are no hard-workers and competent teachers performing far better than others out there in those schools. Because there are indeed! In fact, to ever think so would be to operate on the brinks of sublime naivety. The point is, these gems, these high performers, even your whizz-kids, have come through a lot of preparation and polishing from other practitioners other than you. And when you brag, “I produced so many passes” remember the “unsung heroes” who made it all look so easy for you.
The Cristiano Ronaldos, Neymars and Lionel Messis of the world’s most beautiful game know that their accolades in soccer are or were born out of the efforts of super midfielders and playmakers, who give them or gave them the balls to tuck behind the net.
If they forget that, they are brilliant fools. No one gave Ballotelli the ball. How many did he score?
Yet more food for thought.
Online Reporter