From being heroes of the people to scum of earth

THE difficulties faced by teachers in education have clouded whatever good the government has done in the sector since the advent of democracy, a Nelson Mandela Bay teacher says.

The teacher, who preferred to remain anonymous, taught at city schools for 36 years and felt her first 16 years of teaching were much better.

“I cannot say exactly when the change happened, but the profession has changed. I feel like teachers have been relegated from glorious beings who were respected in the community to scum of the earth at the mercy of pupils, parents, unions and government,” she said.

The teacher, who is 60 and retired recently, had hoped to work until she was at least 65, but had experienced enough of an “oppressive” system.

“The government did good by upholding the rights of children, but in doing that they trampled on those of teachers,” she said.

“Back then, parents were involved in their children’s education and were so hungry for it that they worked hard to ensure their children were properly educated. Now things are very lax, especially in terms of discipline.”

She said while the Bantu education system had aimed at limiting black people’s education levels and ensuring they remained at the bottom of the food chain, its products were employable.

“The trial and error ways of the [current] government – where they changed syllabi often and did away with subjects like woodwork, plumbing and electrical studies – have compromised education,” she said.

“Instead of doing away with them at school level, they should have just incorporated both academic-based subjects and practical ones because not every child is good at learning subjects.

“That is why we are sitting with unemployable graduates.”

Another mistake had been abandoning teacher colleges and forcing teachers to get degrees.

The power of unions had also undermined teachers while their rights were “supposedly being looked out for”. She added: “Unions have played a big role in the downward spiral in education.”

Further, the current redeployment drive that was seeing teachers leave their schools to teach at others “is a government failure”, she says.

In addition, the lack of sporting facilities was a concern in some schools because pupils who were good at sport were often recruited by better schools.

“A great success, though, that we are all grateful for, is the school nutrition programme that sees a lot of children fed because poverty is still very rife out there,” she said.