The societal standing, which, historically, our teachers and the teaching profession, as a whole, have enjoyed, historically, has always been informed, much more, by the popular regard from which teaching, as a profession has benefitted, as a noble pursuit, than by the material returns enjoyed by our deliverers of education.
The societal standing which teachers have derived from their pursuits, has been a function of their deliverables, the procession of ‘graduates,’ not least, high-achievers whom they turn out; students whose standout performances provide a vehicle through which teachers realize their standing and their reputations.
What the teachers of yesteryear derived mostly from their toil, attest to their dedication to the intellectual development of their charges. That said, the decibel level of the tributes from which they benefitted did little to alter their material means. It is the profession rather than the professionals themselves that have hogged the spotlight.
One never got a sense that teachers – even if they would have been acutely aware of the dichotomy between their social standing and their actual material means – ever made an undue fuss over their circumstances. It was as if the societal recognition which they derived from their toil in the interest of their charges’ intellectual development was sufficient reward.
It would, however, have been naïve to expect that this would remain a permanent condition. Change has come, primarily, on account of the sustained indifference of the powers that be to the fact that people’s material circumstances cannot be altered through the kind of tokenistic ‘recognition’ reflected in verbal public acknowledgement and certificates and medals that could not be converted into material means. Teachers, by and large, have woken up to this reality.
We are aware of numerous stories of teachers who simply meandered their way through decades of tutoring, and at the end of the day being ‘rewarded’ with retirement into material obscurity. Some of them, thankfully, have been able to convert their classroom reputations into post-retirement private education delivery pursuits, welcome subsistence to peppercorn pensions.
How much has changed over time has been a matter of animated discourse. What has not changed is an enduring awareness that teaching is no pathway to the realization of significant material gain. Emoluments have remained anchored to the floor and we still live in times where, to a considerable extent, teachers’ reputations are hinged to the accomplishments of their charges who had gone on to make something of themselves in one high-profile field of endeavour or another. For some teachers it begins and ends there.
It has been, to an overwhelming extent, the posture of government that has left teachers pinned to the floor. While, for example, it is altogether fitting that our children who do well at their respective examinations be appropriately recognized – and here the Grade Six and CXC examinations come to mind – there is no suitable public recognition regime that acknowledges the role which the teachers play in ‘turning out’ standout scholars.
Over time, government has stuck doggedly to the ‘convention’ of refusing to create a regimen that ensures that teachers’ rewards are commensurate with the extent of their effort, the altogether absurd pushback argument being that the ‘vocation’ of teaching carries with it the understanding that the privilege of being part of the profession is, in itself, sufficient reward. Indeed, it has become commonplace for the powers that be to launch what, sometimes, are the most withering verbal attacks on teachers for reasons that have to do with acts of militancy designed to do no more than draw attention to the circumstances under which they toil.
The erosion of the traditional (even if overwhelmingly patronizing) ‘regard’ that our society has traditionally had for teachers has become incrementally worse over time. It is government, overwhelmingly, that must carry the can for this. It is, for the most part, the failure of government, over the decades, to translate that handed-down tokenistic ‘recognition’ that has always been ‘afforded’ teachers into more meaningful acknowledgement of the role that they continue to play that has been largely responsible for the circumstances in which teachers and by extension, the profession itself, find themselves today.
Whatever else we may say about material remuneration, it remains the most recognizable barometer through which the value of any field of work is measured. Where teachers are concerned, this historically, has, not been the case.
Degraded teacher-student relations that derive from wider societal changes and challenges have now become sufficiently worrisome. Here, it is difficult to overstate the point that loss of teacher authority is, perhaps, the biggest challenge facing the education system. This has derived, in large measure, from a contemporary in-school disciplinary culture which, frequently, pits teachers against their charges in ‘battles’ for in-school control. Many of these confrontations have been known to turn ugly. These, frequently, are fuelled by an ‘enforcer’ dimension to children’s delinquencies, so that teachers, chastened by what, sometimes, have been physical confrontations, have, in many instances assumed an ultra-defensive posture that has to do with their mindfulness of their own physical well-being.
If the authorities cannot turn what is decidedly a worsening seamy side to our education delivery regime around, then, unquestionably, we are well and truly on a hiding to nowhere. More to the point, the profession of teaching will become an increasingly hard road to travel from those who still have a passion for the pursuit.
Without education delivery, the essential wheels of societal progress will simply corrode. The reality is, however, that at a time when the country contemplates its hoped-for transformed development trajectory, we are yet to begin to pay the commensurate meaningful attention to the importance of a settled, strictly rules-driven school environment, in which teachers are empowered to play a role which only they can. It is an inexplicable and worrisome shortsightedness for which, in more ways than one, we will eventually pay a high price except we radically adjust what appears to be the prevailing line of official thinking.
