The best teachers serve pupils first
GREETINGS to all new teachers! Many of you would have completed your final examinations at universities that for the past two years have been battered by student protest action with a demand for free quality decolonised education for all.
This legitimate call is, in essence, a reflection of the massive levels of poverty and inequality in our country, and you will be entering a school system where this is also starkly manifested.
Most of you will be looking forward to your first experiences as a teacher and to the way in which you will be able to put into practice all that you have learnt – and a lot that you were not taught – during the time of your training.
You would have thought about what type of teacher you want to be and in arriving at a decision, you would have also thought of some of those who, during your years at school, were your own teachers. There were some that you respected because they were good teachers.
They were keen, well-prepared, stimulating friends who helped you to think clearly, who were as much concerned about you as with what they taught, who had principles and values which showed in everything they said and did.
Then there were others whom you would rather forget, who betrayed a lack of interest, ideals and principles which was obvious in everything they did or did not do. What sort of teacher do you hope to be?
You have an enormous responsibility to the children to help them to develop their full potential, to give them such skills and understanding as will enable them to make sense of the world about them, to give them the tools with which to solve problems and to help them to use those tools in the most effective manner, to introduce them to books and the means of learning for themselves.
You will have to assist children to ask questions and to find answers, to be critical and at the same time to begin to build up a set of values which will help them to distinguish between right and wrong, good and bad, real and apparent.
As a young teacher starting out in your career, you will be faced with a choice.
You can use your teaching skills to sub-serve the purpose of the masters of the education system; that is, you can indoctrinate your pupils to accept the place in society allegedly ordained to them. Or you can use those self-same skills and your knowledge to achieve the aims of a democratic education. Then your skills and the application of your knowledge would have to grow and unite with a conscious, honest direction and purpose in teaching.
Education must always be one of the fundamental objectives in the struggle for a truly free and equal society. Do not be the teacher who says, quite frankly, that “my job is to teach and not be concerned with changing either my own school or society at large”.
Be a reflective teacher. Constantly examine and question your own practice and learning styles of your pupils. Reflect upon your delivery and effectiveness for accompanying and supporting your pupils. It is one of the oldest clichés in education that, in the final analysis, every teacher teaches people and not this or that subject.
What is important is that the education element, the guidance and opening and cultivation of the minds and attitudes of the pupils must never be ignored.
The schools of the poor are beset with many problems, most of which are caused by factors beyond their control. Government policies have for decades played havoc with the country’s education, and therefore with the lives of the majority of South Africa’s children.
They are the victims of poor resources, inadequate facilities, overcrowded classrooms, the effects of low teacher morale. All these undermine the vital role that education has to play in any society. Many schools have become sites of strife, conflict and physical danger for both students and teachers.
The schools at which these acts of violence have been reported are all situated in sub-economic, under-privileged communities where many social disabilities – unemployment, crime, gangsterism, drug-dealing and abuse – are a way of daily life.
Children grow up in an environment where the moral fibre of society has been broken to a level where there is no self-respect, no respect for others and no regard
Be a reflective teacher. Constantly examine and question your own practice and learning styles of your students.
for human life. Because of largescale unemployment and therefore poverty, parents are not in a position to provide a home that is educationally uplifting, stimulating and inspiring.
Teaching is not easy. It is demanding and requires enthusiasm, resilience, energy, idealism, dedication. But it has its rewards.
The rewards are to be found in the role you play as an educator, the influence you exert upon children and the contribution you make to change. But if you are to deal with the day-to-day problems of our whole social system, you have to gain as clear an understanding as you can of the social, political and economic roots of our society. As a teacher, you must continue to be a student in order to have an arsenal of ideas from which you can draw. Inculcate in your pupils the norms and values that are not tainted by concepts of race. Instil in them a powerful acceptance of the truth that they share a common humanity with all people both in this country and throughout the world. Make them aware of the social, economic and political disabilities suffered by a whole people here and in other parts of the world.
You have the responsibility thrust upon you to defend your pupils’ education, to deploy all your skills and knowledge to make a success of your pupils’ stay at school and to prepare each and every pupil for further studies. You will need to stand together with your colleagues against the enemies of education – especially those bureaucrats in the Education Department who would debase education.
Do not be surprised if you detect multiple attempts in the flawed curricula and lowered standards to indoctrinate students and to promote mediocrity. To be a teacher, to be concerned primarily and immediately with the youth, to be a disseminator of ideas, a creator of ideals and a builder of character is challenging, exciting and eminently worthwhile. The challenge is to equip yourself for the task. The excitement lies in the feeling that you are contributing to the breakdown of the old and the building of the new. And worth-whileness lies in the purpose and direction of your work inside the classroom as well as in the knowledge that you are helping to telescope fundamental social change. Let us live for our children. We wish you a challenging and fulfilling career in this noblest of professions.
Petersen is the joint secretary of the New Unity Movement and a former principal of Jubilee Park Primary School in Uitenhage.