LIFE IN RETIREMENT

The difference between teaching then and now in hinged on one issue, which is training. In whichever way you want to look at teaching, if you remove training, then you would question whether those who are teaching are teachers. Because if they don’t have the training and they don’t know how to teach, you find that they may be found wanting in some rudiments of teaching, and consequently their classroom skills may not be what it ought to be.

But if you are a trained teacher, and you were left with 30-40 children in a classroom over any subject, you would know how to handle them. Therefore, the difference is that some of us were trained very vigorously as distinct to the type of training we have now. If I have to be very blunt, I would say that those in my age group were better prepared to teach than the teachers we have now.

Well, I think if you want to enjoy what you are doing, you need to have lightness and love of it, because it is the only way you can throw yourself into it. Once you don’t love what you are doing, it results to disaffections.

Two, you have to be committed to what you are doing, and concentrate on it. You also need to discipline yourself and get training on what you are doing so that you can become more efficient. And then of course your integrity must be intact. One must be a person of integrity and live above board, especially if you are teacher, because they are working with children who see them at model. This is a cardinal principle of our profession.

A teacher has to behave on a very high moral standard, and by that his children would come to like him more and you interact with them not on master-subordinate relationship. All these issues are relevant to all endeavours.

Both of them have their qualities and the qualities change because of development. The North of our days was one. You can imagine only one ministry of education covering the entire North, and all other ministries. So, you find that we have no choice but to work together under an accepted leadership to get us move forward.

Now, you are talking about 19 states. So, they have their peculiarities. I don’t know if we have made a better job if we have remained with one ministry of education, for example, running the whole of these states. Now, the population has increased, you have more children out of school and you need to have organised sectors to take care of these challenges.

Therefore, it is difficult to say that this time is better than the past, but if you are looking at it from the human relations point of view, certainly I would prefer the past.

We related with one another very well. The leadership was highly respected, not only Sardauna, but all his ministers like Makaman Bidda, Wazirin Katsina (Isa Kaita), Ibrahim Musa Gashas, Inuwa Wada, Sir Kashim, Joseph Tarka,