The Sunday News
Cetshwayo Mabhena
An old headmaster that I know used to drive an ancient car that had a sticker with the important message: “If you can read this, thank a teacher!”
All academic and professional disciplines under the sun happen to be founded on the efforts of a teacher somewhere. Literacy, the ability to read and write, and numeracy which is competency at counting, are both basic skills that are owed to primary school teachers and other basic educators.
Presidents of countries, scientists of note, titanic academics, artistes, engineers and philosophers just to name but a few prominent occupations, all owe their ability to discharge their important duties to some teachers and mentors somewhere.
The universal importance of teachers and the teaching profession has given the name “noble profession” to teaching. Teachers shape minds and hearts of peoples from a young age.
For that reason, the teaching profession is not only an important but also a powerful vocation to which the world owes its advancement and progress in almost every area of endeavour.
Curiously, the teaching profession is one of the least rewarded professions and teachers are the most poorly paid workers under the sun.
One may ask why so much nobility can go without reward in a world that values knowledge and enlightenment.
The government officials of all countries that decide national budgets and business organisations and individuals that make big money almost all owe their success to some teachers somewhere but that has not changed the fortunes of teachers almost in every country in the world.
Or does the nobility of the profession refer to the sacrifice and poverty that goes with its professionals?
My purpose in this article today is to briefly examine the power and also privilege of the teaching profession as a profession that in many ways shapes societies by producing mindsets and characters that drive world history.
If it is true that knowledge is power then it is also true that teachers the world over hold some power and also in a way do or should enjoy some privilege.
I write as a son of a school headmaster and an Anglican priest who has spent a long part of his short life under the care of teachers of all forms and types.
I can be trusted to reflect meaningfully on the teaching profession and preaching vocation, occupations that are divided by a rather very thin line.
My father moved from the classroom to the chapel with ease and I saw no principal difference in his enjoyment of preaching and teaching, he did both with ecclesiastic passion.
I can also be trusted to defend the children of teachers and preachers that are a traumatised lot that is largely misunderstood.
There is a social stigma that accompanies being the son of a priest, and that of a teacher.
On the one hand society expects exemplarity from one in terms of manners and behaviour while on the other hand friends and playmates are reluctant to involve one in any naughty games and adventures lest the news quickly reaches the teacher or the priest.
The children of teachers and preachers may grow up bored and isolated, excluded from some social sports because they are not trusted by playmates.
I remember well walking from Siganda Primary School with a group of sons and daughters of other villagers.
Hunger pressed hard on us and the temptation to jump the fence into a nearby field and liberate a ripe watermelon to treat our hunger became real.
Sibonginkosi, a fellow that I remember to have been a competent thief and liar, volunteered to jump in and bring out the fat melon while we watched over for any approaching dangers.
Bongi looked more comfortable lying through his teeth than he was telling the truth, and was he a thief! His offer to do the actual stealing was on that day refused.
Takesure said “No, no, no, ayikhona! Let the teacher and priest’s son do it so that the crime will belong to him and he won’t tell his father, otherwise lets not do it.” So let us just say it was not done.
My good memory only goes as far as when we enjoyed not one but two fat melons in the thick bushes of eSibomvu.
Children of priests and teachers have to be naughtier than other kids in order to be accepted in the community of normal kids or resign to boredom and exclusion.
I don’t really remember for what exactly besides the watermelon incident, there were so many adventures, but Nonhlanhla the dimpled girl from across the stream from our village, promised to marry me 20 times when we grow up, of course, for the size of the bag of tricks I carried around.
Genealogies and challenges of the teaching profession
In the Global South the teaching profession like modern education itself came as a colonial profession.
The first teachers were missionaries and Christian proselytisers. As missionaries they were committed vocationalists that were not paid for their services as they considered it duty to God.
Missionaries as teachers and preachers were both saints and monsters. They imparted great knowledge but also did some homework for the colonial project.
It is missionaries that softened and disciplined natives and made them easy targets for Empire builders.
Possibly the poor rewards for the teaching profession emanate from the history that teaching was first and foremost a missionary position, I mean occupation, that was a duty to God and sacrificial work.
There is also a myth in the ancient West that the truth does not go with wealth. Great truth-tellers like Jesus the Christ were poor persons.
The dictum “poor as a church mouse” refers to the general poverty of preachers and missionaries as teachers.
Accused of miseducation the youths and lying to society, and threatened with death, Socrates defended himself by pleading poverty.
The fulcrum of his case was that he could not possibly be lying because he was not paid a cent for his ideas.
The mythical logic is that truth and knowledge are not supposed to be sold or bought but must be dispensed for the greater good and as a duty to God.
For centuries, preachers in temples and teachers in schools have survived from tithes, alms and donations from faithful well-wishers.
A strict moral code is levied on teachers the world over.
An example of this tyrannical code is in the stigma and penalties that are placed on those teachers that succumb to the temptation of liaising romantically and sexually with their students, more than any other profession teachers are not supposed to see their charges in any inappropriate terms.
The teaching profession, just like its cousin the preaching vocation, must be kept by all means, innocent and holy.
True to the saying that stolen water is sweet, teachers all over the world have been frequently naughty and stealing into the forbidden territory of creating inappropriate relations with their students, preachers and missionaries have also been found enjoying the sweetness of stolen waters in their congregations.
Psychologists have uncovered that students in high schools and congregants in churches frequently find teachers and preachers overwhelmingly attractive and irresistible.
A student that I know openly told somebody that I know that there is something that feels like conquest in unfreezing a teacher and rendering them in an uncompromising position by sheer temptation.
Teachers and preachers are the most tempted professionals under the sun, prime targets of the serpent, and that has been so from the beginning. Please don’t judge me, I am a good son of a priest and a headmaster, but I remember at primary school looking at a certain lady teacher of mine with eyes and a mind that had no Jesus at all.
I was just vulnerable. Teachers are tasked by law and ethics to develop and protect some of the vulnerable members of society, children, and that is no job for chancers but true heroes and heroines.
To be continued next week
