In the old days, teachers were gods. They were next to the white colonial masters in order of rank. They were respected and valued. They were seen as people sent by God to remove ignorance from the earth in place of the fortunes and good news of life. A community of yesteryear would never make a decision if the teacher is absent, because their input is crucial to the decision of the elders.
The teacher of yesteryear never suffered anything. He was robust and well fed. It barely touched his salary, except when he needed it to buy a car or build a house. Their accommodation and food were taken care of by the community. Their laundry and house cleaning were the exclusive domain of the students. They represented the community in government and other meetings. The masters of old were next to the kings.
But its counterpart in modern times is easily recognized when cornered. He moves in tattered clothes. His shoes are worn. He is so thin and dry that his pants occasionally fall off his buttocks. When you wear a tie, there is always a large gap between your neck and the collar of your shirt. He is always hungry and therefore always angry. Sometimes out of anger he teases a student and the next day the child’s father comes to school to bully him.
He doesn’t dare to present himself to important people as a teacher if he wants recognition: he prefers a more polished phrase: educational consultant. Because his salary is too meager to keep for a month, he resorts to blackmailing students with one excuse or another. Sometimes he gets involved in the GCE ‘expo’ business to make ends meet.
Some of the students even call him by different denominations and he responds with joy. No one recognizes him when he attends a community function. He finds it difficult to get a lady of his choice because no girl wants a teacher for a date. You do not dare to attend a political meeting if your pocket is not large enough, otherwise you will not be recognized. Your cashless contribution to back it up will not be welcome, regardless of your education and wealth of experience.
Every student wants him to teach him, but no student wants to be in his profession. Every parent needs him to teach his son or daughter, but no parent wants his son or daughter to teach for a living. Love him or hate him, the teacher stands perhaps as the last bastion of moral rectitude in a culture that seems bent on avoiding that very possibility. The plight of today’s teacher is regrettable.
The remuneration of teachers has always been at the forefront of the national discourse. Poor pay, which does not reflect the harsh economic environment, has often led to strikes by members of the teaching profession at almost all levels of education in Nigeria. Elementary and secondary school teachers in most states of the federation have had to collect bones at different times with supervisory authorities. It has become almost unimaginable to imagine a complete academic session that is not affected by the labor actions of teachers at all levels of education in the country. The basic salary of a teacher is so abysmal; he / she has to reinforce the same with finding a small-scale business while reporting to class, just to make ends meet.
It is not uncommon to find a science lab in a typical high school on earth almost devoid of the most basic equipment. Private high schools seem to do better, but most also do poorly when it comes to supplying learning environments with the tools necessary to make learning much easier for the teacher and the student. Most students graduating from high school in science, especially in rural Nigerian communities, only know what a beaker or conical flask is on the day the Chemistry practical exam will be taken. The experiments described by ‘Abbot’ and PN Okeke in their Physics texts sound so surreal to them and their teachers. The teacher, faced with these limitations in transferring knowledge to his ward, is expected to do so anyway by parents and principals or risk being labeled not good enough and fired. Sadly, the books stored in most school libraries are from the Stone Age.
Teachers are also on the receiving end of neighborhood or student violence, and examples abound. Students who want better grades even when they don’t deserve them have often put the teacher in jeopardy. Male students in our ivory towers have often used the instrumentality of cult groups to harass teachers at will. I remember an incident where one of my teachers in high school was beaten to pulp in a dark alley while walking home from a grocery store. A few days later, two students who never attended classes and who had often failed their math exams were found guilty of the attack and subsequently expelled. Stories abound of teachers who have endured student violence, including its transfer to members of their families.
Those who brand teachers as receivers of bribes and custodians of moral bankruptcy in our institutions of higher education must first look at the other side of the coin: the works that the teacher has to endure to do his job; a job that he enjoys but that society doesn’t seem to give a damn about. The teacher is responsible for the achievements of the men and women who make decisions in all sectors of our national life. The teacher goes through the rigors of meticulously gathering his materials all night before coming to class, hardly having slept. Yes, you receive a salary, but that salary is a drop in the ocean when juxtaposed with the huge salaries and bonuses that are sent to our elected politicians at all times. Yes, the master is far from perfect and should sometimes have a little slack for underperforming, but if ever there was a job that should be considered (to borrow from Julius Caesar) as the noblest of all , it should be the old one. profession of pedagogy!
With the dangers associated with their job, it is a wonder there are still men and women for whom teaching remains a passion and not just a job. These are the last masters standing, who choose to look beyond the dangers and trials that the job brings, but fully focus on it. Neither society, the environment, nor misguided and recalcitrant students encourage them. If these teachers are not helped and encouraged, soon and I mean soon, there may be no Teacher standing. On a daily basis, these men and women are shaping the world around us in various classrooms across the country, as we bang on our laptop keyboards in offices, entrusting the mental and physical development of our children to the teacher — the latter. man standing in a world where few are worth the names of the professions through which they pass.