Aaarrrgggghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!

I really don’t mean to use this blog as an outlet for my workday frustrations but the core of what is annoying me is something worth talking about.

I am one of a rare species. I am a male teacher, teaching in a primary school. While I don’t know the exact stats on these things, I would hazard an educated (excuse the pun) guess that there are approximately 2 male teachers for every 20 female teachers in primary schools in South Africa. For a long time teaching was seen as a profession suitable for a woman as it was (like nursing) an opportunity to apply their inherent nurturing skills, didn’t involve having to make important decisions, other than imparting the ability to read, write and do sums correctly. It also provided women with something to keep themselves busy during the day while their husbands went out and worked hard in order to support the family. (I can feel the feminists cringing, but this is simply a personal reflection on the history of the profession.)

As times have changed, so has the structure of society. The rate of divorce has rocketed around the world. Family values have taken a nose dive and with the ever increasing pressures of the unscrupulous marketing world telling us that we simply cannot survive if we don’t wear the correct outfits, listen to the correct music, drive the correct cars and drive ourselves into debt buying useless kitchen gadgets off of ridiculous television infomercials, we are raising children that need more than just the ability to read, write and do their sums. We need to be educating children with ability to think independently, have enough self-confidence to stand up to peer pressure, and the ability to make healthy daily decisions about their lives. I am not saying that women teachers cannot meet these needs. In fact I know many women teachers who have had the most remarkable, profound and lasting affect on children. I am suggesting though that many women who ended up in the teaching profession for reasons as mentioned above may have found themselves unable to make a positive difference on the child of today. An even more serious concern is that there are many teachers (men and woman alike) who are simply out of touch with what it is that we need to be doing for the children of today in order for them to be successful in the world of tomorrow.

This brings me to my current frustration. Through a series of events I found myself teaching at a relatively new private school in Cape Town. The school markets itself at face value. Therefore we spend many hours making sure that the pin boards and display areas have sufficient “wow” factor so that any prospective parent entering the school premises is suitably impressed. Similarly, the academic results of the school are often touted as a reason to enrol at the school. But given the newly developing education system in South Africa I would be wary of using paper bound statistics as a measure of a child’s competence. In fact we should never judge a child’s worth based on a subjective report analysis with no bearing on real life. Don’t get me wrong though, there is much good in the new and developing education system, I just don’t believe that we are doing it justice just yet.

I am not a teacher who sticks to routine and convention but do understand the institutional policy that in order to regulate achievement (there’s an oxymoron of note, and an all too frequently used term that makes my balls itch!) and to monitor success we do need certain structures and systems in place. However when it comes to education I do not believe in doing things simply for the sake of doing them, or because they will make us appear to be doing marvellous things on the education front. I would much rather spend my time with enthusiastic teachers, brainstorming new and innovative ways of reaching and affecting children’s lives. I believe that if we had less policy and more freedom to experiment and play with new ideas we would achieve far greater things. Rather than debating the colour of mapping pins for our displays let us be creative in making the best predictions of the skills and knowledge that a child will need in twelve years time when he or she leaves school and enters the real world. Let us find ways to bolster self worth, to instil morals and tolerance and to maximise understanding in a world that has gone mad!

Here endeth the lesson!