Teachers’ ills require strong medicine

THE article, ‘Teachers at breaking point’ in POST, September 2, refers.

Candice Soobramoney has justifiably diagnosed the real distress that is endemic in the teaching-learning environment and has exposed it clinically.

Now that the secret illness is in the public domain, the employer (Department of Basic Education) needs to take full responsibility and take practical measures to address and remedy it by showing good faith and objective reasoning.

A special dispensation should be created for the medical management of educators who suffer from work-related, stress induced manifestations such as hypertension, diabetes and cardiac conditions.

As a result of the characteristic docile nature of many teachers, the occupational culture of tolerance and unquestioning co-operation with principals, teachers accept their lot (especially level one educators) much like the character Boxer in Animal Farm.

This oppression by autocratic upper management may one day find an explosive outlet as one finds today in America, when an ‘enraged madman’goes berserk, leaving a trail of human casualties.

Unions ought to help remedy such situations promptly, but have sympathy for principals, and approach the matter very gently. In addition, the employer has become callous and despotic, and sadly certain principals enact this horrendous ethos in schools.

CHARLES MUNSAMY Via e-mail