Moral indifference in teaching

“Indifference is not the beginning; it is the end. Therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the oppressor – never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten.” -Elie Wiesel

Moral Indifference is a total lack of motivation to one’s authentic moral judgement. Marumo and Pansiri aver that moral indifference is when someone simply could not care less about something that they should care about. They add it is when someone who knows their habits are terrible for the environment but they just don’t care and continue with their unacceptable habits or practices.

Without a learner there would be no school and consequently no teacher. The learner thus becomes the most important resource in a school. By extension, what defines a good teacher is what they do to, for and how they treat their learners. Impacting a child’s life positively is the moral compass of any good teacher. Viewed broadly, teaching exists to facilitate learning. It is a launching pad for students to meet curriculum outcomes and consequently achieve their life dreams. Additionally, teaching develops in a child societal values, reveals to the child their identity and gives them tools needed to navigate the complexities of social relationships.

According to Tharu, one of the core values teachers should always possess is having a sense of hope that their students can do better. Teachers should be alive to the reality that some students could be weak and not be able to catch up with fast pace. Summarily saying, teachers can make or break learners.

Being a microcosm of the society and a social institution, the school is not free of societal influence founded on expectation. Moral indifference thus, has no place in an environment that claims to groom children. Moswela and Marina write, “In Botswana it has been found that teacher unprofessional behaviours like absenteeism and sexual relationships with learners are some of the issues affecting learners’ attendance and performance in schools.”

Paedophilia has seen many a young girl drop from school to give birth to their teachers’ offspring. Others drop out due to the discomfort of having slept with a teacher. Sports especially, is one area that makes children vulnerable to wolves who wear a teacher’s cloak. Unfortunately, the profession has no way of curbing this and children are at the mercy of the teachers’ moral conduct. School Heads in this case, are to blame for protecting such teachers. The teaching service in Botswana is plagued by serial paedophilia, where a pedophile instead of being fired, is transferred to a different school to go continue his wickedness.

The blame also can be placed at the Teacher Unions’ doorsteps. Teacher unions represent pedophiles in disciplinary cases and go on to help them defeat the ends of justice. Moral indifference is not only displayed by the pedophiles, but also by the school management and union leadership too. They choose to side with the grown-up over the child that was defiled, a child who has no way of defending themself.

Moral indifference is glaring in the language policy embedded in the Botswana Education Policy of 1997 and the Revised National Policy of Education 1994. Polelo posits that these documents are used by teachers to ensure homogeneity and uniformity of the curriculum activities in Botswana schools as evidenced by children not being allowed to use mother tongue in class. In 1986, Ngugi stated that children learn better in a language that they use in everyday lives, and that it enhances effective teaching and learning.

More researchers like Prah, insist that because medium of instruction is English, such a language in the education policy functions as a tool to exclude and subjugate marginalized communities and bar them from decision making. Resultantly, this does not prepare students for today and tomorrow as they tend to fail to understand the world in their own context which can result in poor academic performance.

The main role that teachers play in the lives of learners is being a parent away from home. They are role models and second parents. When asked what in their view the best teacher is like, a learner once said, “My best teacher saw me as a continuum of herself; she is someone who has personified teaching for me. There are times when I think my mannerism match her personality more than my own mother, she treated us like her own children and watched out for us, making sure we always did their best.”

Buttressing this, Nicholas A. Feroni put it succinctly when he said, “Students who are loved at home come to school to learn, students who aren’t loved at home come to school to be loved.” This right here means that any teacher who chooses to be neutral in situations where children face injustice and exclusion is unjust. That moral indifference is more unjust than injustice. And that a morally indifferent teacher is actually corrupt, for silence in the face oppression is itself gross oppression.

Other learners who suffer exclusion are those who have learning disabilities like Dyslexia, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ADS), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Dysgraphia, Dyscalculia and Irlen Syndrome. Society stigmatises these children because it often makes an assessment based on incomplete information.

Resultantly, society often misjudges those with the disorder. This spills over to schools. Before learners deal with the mammoth task of learning with disabilities, they have to deal with the stigma mountain.

In school, children are excluded when the teaching and learning process is not tailor-made to meet their unique learning styles and need,s hence learning materials do not suit them and is incomprehensible to them. These learners also suffer discrimination, prejudice, bullying and violence. Morally indifferent teachers ignore these. The moral fibre of many teachers has deteriorated as has their moral compass magnet. One is left wondering what must be done to revive it. Cases of teachers who come to work reeking of alcohol; who sexually violate learners; who do not mark and grade tests and exams and end up cooking marks; who abscond from work; who go to class and not deliver; who assault learners in the name of corporal punishment are all clear indications of the moral indifference that bedevils the teaching profession. CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER!

“I can be morally indifferent and trust that those in power will provide the necessary change to protect children, or I can step up and do the hard thing and speak words that cannot be spoken by those who are without power or advocates.”

This was my point of departure decades ago, when I decided to challenge BISA leadership and its decision to give the under-17 netball team to men, a decision that for decades saw paedophilia being swept under the rug. I decided to put my neck on the line, risk it all and speak for the girl child. I consequently became unpopular in sports circles. To this day, I don’t regret speaking out, for it has saved many children and it continues to. Millions of girls for years to come will escape paedophilia, at least in BISA netball.

The suffering of others is always our business as well as our problem to solve.