Friday, August 31, 2012

Teach a Man a Fish'n

My mother is a teacher - one of the last good career teachers left in the classroom, sadly she is about to retire, her doing so marks the last of the real teachers who actually taught (not thought) because they wanted to, taught because they see teaching as something noble and in keeping with our National Pledge (if you don't know which part of the pledge you should be ashamed of yourself). She ensured as best as she could that children learned or at least were empowered to do whatever honest means they needed to do to get by, she was and is still of the opinion that regardless of what is thought not every child can learn, but every child can help him or herself, this coming from someone who has been in the classroom for almost 40 years, I won't dispute that, experience teaches wisdom, she should know, she has taught Accountants, Lawyers, Doctors, Teachers, Police, Soldiers, Plumbers, Masons, Electricians, Farmers - pretty much every occupation (good and bad) you can think of.

My point, her days saw teachers who taught because they loved it, it was what they went to school to do - their career, now we see teachers who are just teaching as something to do, not what they aspired to doing but what they do as a third or fourth option, when as a result of their idling their days in school have now found themselves in positions where they are not qualified to do what they dreamed of doing - so get into a Teacher's College and idle their way through the three years and at the end they obtained some form of certification that in theory states they are competent teachers. Well, we are now reaping the fruits of such occurrences. I believe Teacher's Colleges should be the hardest institutions to get into, teachers will be charged with educating the nation's children, we can't leave such an important and demanding task in the hands of people who see it as just a way out - we need serious people who will go above and beyond what is expected of them to ensure that a child is taught how to fish.

In closing, these idlers have taken to teaching and as a result we see the fruits of their work in the CXC passes, not necessarily Patois (its place in the delivery of education in Jamaica is questionable) or English, just idlers who teach or fail to do so.

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