Is teaching still a noble profession?

Is teaching no longer the noble profession it once was? We’ve made it so to the extent that parents these days ask their graduate sons and daughters whether they truly are having a challenge getting jobs – even teaching!

For some reason, I think of myself as a teacher. For, I think I teach all the time. I may not have been schooled in teaching methods sufficiently – or even at all. However somewhere after sixth form education, I taught well enough for my 42 or so students to score distinctions for the first time ever in the girl’s school I taught at.

In my view, teaching is still a noble profession. The “nobility” has been removed from it NOT because anything changed. It’s just that many a quack entered the field through ndugunisation – Swahili for “brotherisation” – or among other ills.

Like many other professions (hey; stop there! Professions, NOT professionals as I hear all the time in Bongoland) lots of undeserving sons of the local chairman of this or that, a retired soldier, an ex-head teacher – and just about anyone who is anyone – has managed to slot their kith and kin into the “ex-noble” teaching profession!

Back in the good old days, teaching was so noble that nearly everyone who ended up to be important passed there on their way to other professions. Teaching was so noble that those who were studying to be engineers or doctors found nothing wrong in walking into a rural secondary or primary school and teaching classes without demanding pay!

Mwalimu Nyerere taught in schools when teaching was a noble profession –and he added to its nobility with his phenomenal leadership abilities.

A short four decades later, we all have teachers in the family; but we also know there are many rotten eggs masquerading as teachers, thus giving the teaching profession a bad name.

I recently hobnobbed with owners, managers and teachers of some private schools and colleges in the Tanzania.

The case of exploiting education as a business needs to be seriously questioned – if only because education is too serious a matter that it ought not to be left in the hands of a few adventures out to make a quick killing.

The fifth phase government of President John Magufuli is running racketeers out of business. But there remain a few troublemakers out there still hell-bent on ruining a good thing: TEACHING!

I overheard a telephone conversation between one such racketeer and his manager...

“We are not going to allow children who have not paid their school fees to sit for examinations. You should call their parents and tell them that if the fees are not paid pronto, they’ll have lost a year of their children’s education,” fumed the private school owner/operator.

Another matter of interest is that of books which pupils need to use over and above the curriculum requirements.

Short of walking on eggshells, as a nation we must have clear guidelines on what is to be taught, who is to teach it, how it is taught – and using what teaching materials, including books and other appropriate teaching aids.

Indeed, the cost of ignorance is much higher than we think – and, as Mwalimu Nyerere once said, quoting the 25th president of Harvard University, Derek Bok: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance!”

The future of our country Tanzania depends on teachers wiping ignorance out of the nation – and policy makers making that possibility a reality.

Kasera Nick Oyoo is a research and communications consultant with Midas Touché East Africa