By Joseph Lamin Kamara
It is palpably clear that many changes have occurred in the teaching profession in 21st Century Sierra Leone. Long before now, say from the ‘60s right up to the turn of the millennium, teaching was like any other profession – law, medicine, etc. Being a teacher then required a considerable amount of experience, maturity in age, and technical training.
If a young man was in his 20s and became a teacher he was considered exceptionally intelligent with a remarkable moral character. However, if a carnal affair was discovered between a female student and a male teacher, this was professionally and tactically concealed because the taboo was a gruesome image on the records of the school, the teacher and the pupil.
The teaching profession required a huge unflappable amount of patience in the classroom with slow learners. The ethics of the profession provided for the status of a teacher to epitomise that of a parent. These institutional or professional fathers and mothers felt innately that it was their professional duty to check on their institutional sons and daughters, monitor their movements, and to report to family.
The latter felt obligated to do regular monitoring of their children in schools. A pupil would be hugely taken aback, while running out in the field or bush, or playing football when teaching was in progress, just to see their parent or guardian appear from nowhere. They would eventually realise trouble was looming over them. It was even normal and considered a responsibility, for a twist-faced head teacher with their shirt neatly tucked in their trousers carrying a long, stretching whip around the village or town. The head teacher would stealthily manoeuvre into public places at night to fish out his student or pupil revellers who left their books for instant pleasure.
The pupils themselves felt education was the most important thing for them. They obviously went with their girlfriends to night clubs and jams, but only occasionally. True, there were some miscreants, but even some university graduates of today are no match for some fifth formers of those years.
Learning was really effective. And the government awarded scholarship, genuinely, to deserving students. There were incentives. There were regular supplies of learning materials. There were even food supplies in schools. It was very obvious that those school-goers were the direct replacements of their leaders hence were accorded that regard.
Today, teaching no longer seems like a profession. If anything it has become a springboard, and the classroom is only a waiting room. In some places such as my hometown Koribondo, young men who abysmally failed the school-leaving WASSCE are being employed as teachers. Ineptitude amidst complacency is rife. Moral decay emanating from arrogance and gross sexual relations between some students and their so-called teachers is astounding. In fact if principals are guilty of this, how would anyone blame their teachers?
The 21st Century Sierra Leonean teachers, both the passionate ones and those waiting for other job opportunities, have devised techniques to better their lives in the classroom. This is very evident in Freetown, perhaps more than anywhere else on earth, where the acts of giving assignments and administering tests and exams are commercial businesses. Like a trader whose ultimate aim is to maximise profit, a good number of Sierra Leonean teachers today are desperate when it is time for assignments, tests and exams. Not so much to keep the students on their toes, but commercialism. It is open and blatant: If you do not pay at least Le 2,000 for an assignment, consider yourself in that teacher's black book. And if you fail to pay for “the assignment” just before or after a test or an exam, you had better start considering another thing – visiting the teacher at home. Some teachers even give up to three or four assignments in one term. Imagine in a class of more than 120. Sometimes the teachers do not bother to collect the test or assignment or exam papers, or if they do they do not bother to mark them. In this syndicate, sometimes the class prefect, or a certain pupil with a special relationship with the teacher, becomes the conduit for what is a bribe in all but name.
What is a gross manifestation of indiscipline and unprofessionalism is to have it very manifest that a teacher is having sexual relations with his student. What was considered to be a taboo in the past is today a normal practice. And teachers, rather than being condemnatory when girls scold each other over a teacher boyfriend, would intervene to resolve such quarrels.
Some of these students are lacking in moral rectitude. They savour their affairs with teachers. And they even flaunt around with them as an achievement. The result? They know they are sure of getting promoted no matter what. And some parents are approving of such making me wonder whether they've asked themselves how many abortions their daughter may have undergone before leaving school. As a parent, this is what you must first do before shouting “Witch!” after barrenness rocks her in marriages.
But for some of these girls they hardly have a choice. What else can they do but to comply with the sexual advances of these dirty old men called teachers. They have nowhere to seek redress. If they refuse such advances and they are failed undeservedly the school authorities hardly - if at all - take any action.
However, not all the eggs are bad. Two female students have complained to me that their form master was seriously sexually harassing one of them. They said he had even withheld some of her grades by way of punishment. She later regained her grades after some intervention.
As a teacher on his way out of the profession, I have seriously blasted a parent on phone after she called to know about her child’s result. I thundered thus: “You have never visited the school, never monitored your child; whether she has really been coming to school or deceiving you. You don’t care about this at all, all you want is she is promoted to another form!” She was conscionable and therefore admitted her fault. Some parents are so mindless and gullible that it is they who actually call to ask “How much should I pay for my child's result?” That is our system, absolutely corrupt. And the earlier those parents are also roped in for prosecution by the Anti-Corruption Commission the better.
But here is a case for today’s teachers: Sierra Leonean teachers are the most neglected and despised group of public servants. Those who are paid, and have worked for many years, cannot ignore the responsibilities of their families or dare to use their largely paltry salaries for further studies. Many maintain their job in disrelish, and have no motivation for further research or studies in their professional areas. And so, obsolescence and monotony are obvious in their delivering of materials they have recycled for many years. They are not in oblivion, they are aware that much of what teach falls far below the prescribed syllabi by the West African Examinations Council. Therefore, some have tried diligence, but the foolish gestures of our education ministry have always angered teachers. In recent years the country has witnessed many strike actions by teachers and lecturers for non-payment of salaries. Sometimes they work for two, three or four months without pay. What do you expect? They practicalise that reckless statement by J.S. Momoh: “Usai yu tai kaw na de I de it” (“A cow grazes where it is tethered”). And so empty leaflets called “pamphlets” have to be sold and bought, assignments have to be given, extra lessons have to be organised, monies have to be paid to collect report cards, and surreptitious replacements have to happen.
If you really want to stop the child from going into the water, you must show them where to go lest they should go into the fire. If you want to stop your child from failing, first stop those things that cause the failure. If you want to stop teachers from being corrupt and improve education in the country employ more teachers, increase their pay, encourage them and pay them regularly. Add to school structures, provide furniture and equip libraries and laboratories. Pay special attention to teachers of English Language, Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Agriculture and other Science subjects. This way the country would not have needed to waste money on that so-called Gbamanja Commission.
A good number of Sierra Leoneans are unemployed. And young people make up over 60% of the country’s population. Many of them are university graduates and have worked in government schools for years, unpaid. Which explanation can the education minister and the president tender for their obvious failure?
Since his appointment as minister of education in 2007, Dr Minkailu Bah has spent almost all his time looking for ghost teachers. He claims he has found them - where are they? Was any one prosecuted for such dastardly act if it ever existed? And even the recruitment of teachers is politicised. With the current system of teaching in Sierra Leone, the country has little or no chance at all in the future. Teaching in yesteryears was far better than today.
(C) Politico 21/08/14
