RESPECT FOR TEACHERS HAS BEEN ERODED

I HAVE never bought into the “Liberation before education” action slogan. Nor was I ever comfortable with teachers being unionised. But I always accepted that change was a reality, even if it included amending the Constitution.

Where does one draw the line between selling one’s labour solely for remuneration and doing a job that you love, even though the pay is poor. Every time I posit this issue, the responses are heated, emotional and, sadly, partisan.

That a surgeon’s commitment to his profession is driven more by the Hippocratic oath than by the party membership card earns hoots of disdain that include calling me a dinosaur.

How does one unionise a religious leader, a teacher, a doctor, a nurse, or a caregiver? Invariably I am accused of elitist distinction between a profession and other service providers.

If I suggest that we are now into semantics, I am accused of hegemony, prejudgement, intellectualising, or even, God forbid, longing for the pre-freedom social template.

The changes we achieved were not all well-thought through. We should be vetting candidates for professional training as teachers. But this must not be followed by disempowering teachers via the Bill of Human Rights. Discipline and respect for one’s elders were not the sole ownership of the apartheid regime. Statesmanship cannot displace the injunctions of God.

We should rethink the agencies that can unite us into collective action. If you argue that those who didn’t strike shouldn’t accept the increased salary, you are straddling the issue. You are implying that your negotiations weren’t fully representative.

I am deeply concerned about the sorry state of the nation and the moral decay that characterises the actions of pupils at schools. We should start a crusade for moral rearmament nationally. How? The same way you eat an elephant: small bits at a time.

We faced the water crisis as a nation. We still cultivate food gardens.

We had Bambanani, where parents protected the street address of their children’s school. I hope my readers (all three of them) will remember that the new mayor unbundled that successful effort.

Faith-based instruction should include a daily pledge from children, reminding them that we have great role models in Jesus and Muhammad (PBUH) and all the other great teachers throughout history.

Sadtu (SA Democratic Teachers Union) and other organisations should separate their political agenda from their didactic input. Parents should be asked to sign undertakings to assist the school with discipline.

Parent committees should be mobilised on street, block and town section level. Safe houses should be established where pupils can go when they feel threatened.

Teachers should remind children of the basics with slogans: If you can read this sentence or play this note, thank a teacher. If you discover a hidden talent and move on to fame, stop to thank a teacher.

On the official level, the education departments should re-empower their managers, advisers, principals and workforce. On a national level, change the Constitution. Education is our greatest asset.

We have already lost one generation to violence. It should stop now. A FRIEND who now lives in England is considering moving into a “tiny house”. It’s a concept that is growing quite rapidly in many countries. You shrink your living space down to a bare minimum without actually sacrificing any of the benefits of modern technology or comfort.

People have been living small for centuries, but until recently they’ve either been extremely rich and lived on board luxury yachts and motor homes, or extremely poor and lived in shacks.

Now, more and more middleincome people are discovering the benefits of living in compact homes.

Do we really need guest bedrooms with en suite bathrooms?

Do we need separate TV rooms, laundry rooms and pantries? If you can spend a holiday in a caravan, why not refine the caravan and use it as a full-time home?

The designers of tiny houses have come up with ingenious ways of saving space.

A padded top turns a bath into a couch or a child’s bed. In a normal sized house, the bath is used for WORLD Heart Awareness Day reminded us all to live healthier lifestyles and take care of our hearts.

The theme this year is a “healthy lifestyle leads to a healthy heart”, a mantra that we should all practise.

The SA Medical Research Council reports that in the Western Cape over 61% of deaths are caused by non-communicable diseases, the main contributor of these being cardiovascular causes (23.4%),