FOR THE LOVE OF TEACHING

 Sir,

I have never seen any other profession where its employees willfully volunteer their time, to work overtime, at the expense of their families, themselves and their sanity as much as teachers do and without any form of incentive or appraisal.

Teachers bear a truckload amount of pressure from superiors who swing on their chairs while looking down on them.
The sad part is that teachers are not okay with this but all they do is mumble their dissatisfaction because their cries only reach the ceilings of their staffrooms.

Teachers are sick individuals. Depression, alcoholism, stress leading to weight gain and hypertension, insomnia, their own children going wayward due to neglect and just general unhappiness are rife among teachers.

We no longer go on vacations, attend social gatherings or funerals. We cannot study further; we miss our children’s first soccer games, concerts and karate lessons, among others.

We don’t have the time to go to the gym or cook a proper dinner for our families, by the end of the day our libidos are so low that we can’t even engage our partners because of sheer exhaustion from the ridiculous overtime teachers put in at work.
If we could take psychometric tests today, I can guarantee you that they would not come out favorably. I have never seen an employer that undervalues and ill-treats it’s human capital as much as the MoE.

If it were not for the retirement packages that teachers painstakingly work for, particularly the ones who have been in this profession for a number of years, they would’ve abandoned ship a long time ago.
Most teachers, if not all of them, are no longer teaching because they have a passion for teaching. No! They are teaching because they get a couple of thousands a month to survive.  

Every other day teachers get ‘memos’ and circulars from vulgar bureaucrats sitting in air-conditioned offices, from districts far and wide through their head teachers and deputies who say; comply or else, procedure says this, regulations dictate, misconduct this, code of conduct that, policy states.

I’m yet to hear of a ‘memo’ that doesn’t talk about anything with a connotation that is punitive at the end of it.
A memo that says: Educators, you are doing a great job! Thank you. Here is a weekend away for team building. Here are vouchers for a spa treatment. Here is a fun run, bring your family along.

Here is an increase because you’re all awesome. Signed: Dept of Education. Oh what a glorious day that would be!

C M Dluli

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: