Are teachers competent in the subjects they are teaching?
THIS
news about the small percentage of school teachers from Sarawak – allegedly
only 50 out of the 500 earmarked to teach in the state this year – has become a
political issue. For the parents (and grandparents!) of the 460,000 pupils now
beginning their studies, the quality of teachers is more important than the
statistics.
The
parents are worried about the quality of teachers that their children are
getting. For example, if the subject is English, are the teachers good at the
language, able to improve the standard of English as a whole? For that matter,
in any other subject?
How
the teachers fit in or adapt to the circumstances they are placed in reflects
the type of teachers they are – dedicated or just for a job to do.
Modern
teachers are not expected to behave like saints or angels. The days of ideal
teachers like the early Christian missionaries are over. There is no ideal
teacher like JK Wilson of Budu fame anywhere now. I was under a few teachers
from Kerala who taught the subjects that they were good at. Kerala was a
communist-run state in India and yet teachers from there did not impart any ‘-
ism’ to our school.
According
to the Sarawak Teachers’ Union, there are several reasons why teachers from the
peninsula would not teach in the state for long. Among them: those engaged to
be married or if already married, one spouse is miles away from the other.
Contrast
that with the behaviour of the locals; they
stay
teaching much longer even until retirement. Their problem is the factor of home
town; they prefer to teach in a school in their own home town. Imagine a
situation: while the wife is teaching in Lio Mato, the husband is farming in
Bau. Or a husband is teaching in Ba Kelalan and the wife in Sematan. They put
up with it!
These
are natural human problems. A smart government would think of ways and means to
accommodate these human needs. That teacher engaged to be married soon should
be allowed to get married first before posting him or her to Sarawak. Better
still, look for someone else in Sarawak who is better prepared to work in the
Land of the Hornbills. Forget about recruiting a teacher with such problems.
That policy of integrating and uniting people through the medium of teaching is
not for him or her. There are other tools or dimensions of integration and
unity – political, economic, socio-cultural, to mention a few. The education
authorities would save a lot of trouble by concentrating on the local resources.
Continue to train young men and women from Sarawak, and recruit them if they
are good for teaching purposes.
The
news – about only 50 out of 500 teachers being from Sarawak – is being disputed
by some quarters. The number doesn’t matter; what matters is the quality of the
teachers. That one about to get married is out for the time being. That spouse
longing for the company of the other is also out.
Concentrate
on those who are dedicated, ready and willing to teach the subjects they are
trained for, not of religions nor of political ideologies other than the Rukun
Negara.
It
is impossible to produce an ideal teacher. So we have to make do with what we
have.
Surely
it is not impossible to post a married couple of teachers to the same school,
and to provide them with decent living quarters so they can rear their family
together!
Unfortunately,
we are not living in an ideal world. There are a lot of imponderables and
uncertainties in the way.
-
The Borneo Post
Posted in: Perkhidmatan Guru
