adminThis is a day when teachers reflect on the year’s achievements and challenges they face.
Under normal circumstances, these achievements and challenges should be almost universal. It should be a day when teachers share ideas and exchange notes globally, reminiscing on achievements.
However, in Zimbabwe the day only brings sadness among teachers. It is a day when they look back at their sorrowful state. It is a day when they lament how this once noble profession has become a farce in the country; indeed a day when they ponder how teachers have, over the years, been reduced from middle class citizens to downtrodden professionals. It is a day when teachers ask themselves what crime they committed to deserve such a harsh punishment from their employer, the Government of Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwean teachers have used and will continue to use this occasion to highlight their untenable plight to the Government — who is their employer.
Maybe it would have been a different story if the Zimbabwean teacher was failing to perform his or her duties. It is bad on the part of the Government to pay the second best performing work force on the continent peanuts. It is indeed ironic that on one hand the employer boasts and gloats about the high quality of education in the country compared to other African countries while on the other it is failing to recognise the practitioners of that education by paying them well and improving their conditions of work.
If there is anything that has made Zimbabwe the envy of many countries, it is its standards of education. The product churned out of the country’s education system is of such high quality that other countries will scramble for it.
Maybe the most saddening thing is that the product produced by teachers is the same product that disparages teachers. Politicians and other government officials easily forget that they are what they are, invariably because of the effort of a teacher. It has become a norm in Zimbabwe that all and sundry speak despicably about teachers — also forgetting that the numeracy they have, the literacy they have, was gotten through the teacher.
All this is a result of the fact that teachers are among the most lowly paid in the country. When compared to other teachers within the region, Zimbabwean teachers are the least and worst paid. Their pay is so little that it causes a lot of misery on pay day. Despite all these challenges, the Zimbabwean teacher has remained committed to his or her work and does so diligently.
It is therefore incumbent on the Government to improve the lot of teachers in order to maintain, or better still, improve on the quality of education in the country. Teachers alone cannot sustain such high quality standards under these circumstances. The Government also needs to come to the party — by adequately and reasonably remunerating teachers and also creating an enabling environment for learning to take place effectively. The provision of textbooks by the Government in association with Unicef is one good example which should be applauded.
One therefore hopes that, come next year on World Teachers’ Day things would have changed for the better.
Online Reporter