TEACHERS’ OF OUR DAYS ANALOGUE ERA Been a primary school teacher in my village during our analogue era, was a noble profession. Teachers of our days, rightful commanded a huge respect and trust among the villagers regardless of their ages, color, creed and social status in the village. I said commanded respect and trust rightfully, because teachers of those days kept and even defended their personal and professional standings by a creating a detectable difference between them and the uneducated lots in the village without been seen rude and acting discriminative by behaving well, unlike today’s teachers who one may find difficult to differentiate them from the village herders due to their misdeeds, lack of neutrality in matters of village politics and inclining towards the reasoning of their clan. SOURCE OF INFORMATION A part from drilling knowledge into the empty heads of village children, they too were the only source of information, the sole communication conduit between the government officials, other visitors and the villagers. Visitors in our villages were mainly foreigners who spoke language beyond our villager ears and the teachers’ translation services were unavoidable in order for us to transact meaningful and beneficial business with them. Despite been paid more poorly than the Mr. Wilson Sossion led boys and girls, I can’t remember any time in my 8 years schooling duration, of our teachers absconding their duties in pursuit of a selfish rights of fattening their pockets at the expense of denying their learners their moral and constitutional rights to universal education as provided in Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). CARSANT In my remote village, perched 3 miles from the gigantic River- Tana stripes somewhere in Carsant (the place of blessed soil) there were paltry ten teachers in my school, six locals and 4 none locals against 8classes with over 1000 pupils, but these teachers were adequately in all classes at their respectively lessons teaching religiously compared to our digital teachers, who kept missing on average 40% of their classes according to a recent World Bank survey, but still has the audacity of shouting themselves hoarse in the streets of our towns and village alleys clamouring for an increments of an assorted of allowances. Among the allowances our digital teachers want uplifted in accordance to their bothersome legal gazette notice 534 of 1997 are funny to say the least, if not annoying. Some of such allowances, which analogue persons like me find its demands mindboggling are house and commuter’s allowances for the obvious reasons that many of our chalk and cane holders teach in village schools where there is neither houses nor commuting service in the first place. VALUE ADDITION During our days, our analogue teachers’ value additions to our society were immense; as they generously delivered their uncharged services to the community they serve diligently on daily basis without raising a finger of disapproval. Some of the outreach services our teachers offered to our villagers as social responsibilities were but not limited to, serving as impromptu translator during a visitor’s tour, village letter writers and readers (these included personal private letters, official letters among others) political and historical event commentators. MWALIMU KIFLI LETTER Mwalimu Kifli Salat from Gumarey village, on the northern periphery of Masalani town was, one of such teachers who are still revered in the nooks and crannies of my village for his letters writing acumen. In fact, it was rumoured that a letter of displeasure drafted by Mr. Kifli under the request of my village over perennial shortage of water following an intermittent breakdown of the only pump water serving the entire community, has forced then former Garissa District commission to order for an Collins dictionary from Nairobi since there were no bookshops in the town to purchase the same, for him to get a clue, of the English vocabularies spewed on the paper by the talented and long serving English teacher from a remote village in his district. I wish Mwalimu could donate a copy of that letter to our local library as souvenir, indeed if he has a copy of it. Most of our analogue age teachers were either P1, P2 or UT grades, but their command of the queen’s mother tongue was beyond reproach and flawless unlike some current Digital teachers, who despite been armed with multiple of Degrees or Masters certificates having impolite relations with the language. According to a senior education in one of the Counties in NEP has conceded to me that many of our Digital teachers has a frosty contact with language, which is mode of teaching in all subjects in Kenya except one (Kiswahili), which is lingual franca. To be continued
Posted on: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 09:58:52 +0000
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