adminPerspective Stephen Mpofu
Primary and secondary teachers in Zimbabwe should appear in public with their heads hung in self-atonement for the appalling, nay disgraceful pass rate that can only be attributed to their half-hearted performance in class. And also sharing the wrath of parents who painfully part with their hard earned cash for the education of their children, and the public at large who pay taxes for teachers’ salaries, should be teachers’ union leaders for the dismal performances of their members.
It would be no exaggeration for any right thinking Zimbabwean to say our nation is in mourning over the virtual death of an education system that has not only been the pride of this country, but has also enjoyed poll position with literacy ranking highest in Africa at over 90 percent.
It is therefore because of the crushing fall in educational standards at primary and secondary levels that Zimbabweans should rightly wag angry fingers at teachers whose performance, as shown by poor results, leaves not only a lot to be desired but calls, above all else, for a thorough going commission of inquiry to discover just what went wrong in the schools that for long have enjoyed both a high reputation and the envy of other countries.
In expressing his dismay at the overall performance of some schools last year, where some of them in Matabeleland, for instance, recorded zero passes, the senior minister in the president’s office, Ambassador Simon Khaya Moyo, could not have put it more right when he pointed out that the children for whom the nation is coughing up so much are supposed to be the future leaders of this country.
As such it would be foolhardy of anyone to believe that students coming out of school as virtually functional literates can become tomorrow’s leaders, let alone drive the economy of this country equipped only with an ability to read and write and nothing beyond that.
If primary and secondary education becomes a laughing stock — as that appears to be its destiny given the shameful results of last year — standards at higher and tertiary institutions such as universities dotted out in various provinces will be seriously diluted and become nothing but a proverb in the future history of education in Zimbabwe.
It is because of the seriousness of the matter now daunting both the government and the generality of Zimbabweans, that this pen believes an inquiry commission will most effectively identify the riff-raff to be cleaned out of the educational sector. Any other piecemeal attention directed at the shoddy performance in schools is likely to leave, like a stiff broom, culprits hiding in corners of a sector so crucial to the future of this country where indigenisation and economic empowerment have become signature tunes in efforts to achieve sustainable, social and economic transformation.
In their quest for higher pay for their members, the rhetoric of some teachers’ union leaders has tended to hold both the government and parents ransom. Give us higher salaries and we will perform better. These were the remarks, paraphrased here, of some union leaders when putting pressure on their employer, the government, to raise teachers pay yesterday.
The “or else” threat ringing through the demands for better pay and other working conditions can only pass in the ears of this pen, and of many Zimbabweans also as denoting a certain mercenary attitude among the teachers fraternity and some of its leaders. Contextually, therefore is it not true that those teachers whose charges performed pitifully actually spent part if not much of their time working to rule, in anger at salaries that they considered measly to work hard for?
When the government announced recently it would only be in a position to raise teachers’ salaries in April because of current cashflow problems, a hue and cry rose from the teaching sector although some union leaders made weak-kneed pleas as if to placate their members.
It would appear that teachers want their milk at any cost, even if this means milking blood at the expense of the cow’s life. For who does not know in Zimbabwe that the country is under sanctions, which have plugged almost every sector of the economy, the geese that produces the golden eggs for which our patriotic(?) leaders clamour?
Indeed, were other employees in commerce and industry to shut their eyes to the crushing effect of illegal, Western sanctions in those sectors and demand Shakespearian “pounds of flesh”, this country would shut shop and have our erstwhile colonisers coming back with a bang, and Zimbabwe would become the scum of independent Africa.
Do we really want to come to that? Obviously even those hell-bent on milking the cow to its death will not open their mouths either way.
For years, even while blacks worked under atrocious racist conditions in colonial Rhodesia one thing that racist oppressors could not take away from our people was the pride that served as a stamp of the dedication of teachers in their work.
In fact, so fierce was a teacher’s unflinching determination to score 100 percent by his or her class, in spite of crushing conditions of service, that teachers were held in high regard and accorded royal treatment in their communities.
This pen should however not be construed as suggesting that teachers should continue to languish-if indeed they do so now — under unearthly rewards for their sweat.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The thesis of this discourse is that the teaching fraternity should remain patient, recognising the rough period, indeed a watershed, that our economy is passing through so that there is no further aggravation of the heinous effects of sanctions, by patriots.
Of course, the teachers’ employer and all other employers of labour in the economy should not use the sanctions issue as an excuse to remain too close with money even when the country is over the rough trough.
Online Reporter