September 03, 2006

UNTIL a decade ago, children’s activities would include pretending to be teachers with coloured chalks and little blackboards. Some, in fact, even aspired to be teachers when they grew up. Today, those aspirations seem naive and impractical. After all, why waste time and effort over such a “mediocre” profession when there is so much more to be had elsewhere?

As a result, one mostly finds uncompetitive, young people finding their way into the teaching profession, particularly at school and college levels.

Mrs Fatima Waheed, a general science teacher at the BVS Parsi School, Karachi, endorses this statement: "Of course professional graduates from respectable institutions don't want to go into teaching; they don't want to switch careers. It is only those who hold degrees such as BA (Bachelor of Arts) or MA (Masters of Arts) or those who have just done their intermediate, end up as school teachers."

But apparently, these are not the only reasons why the very competent are loath to becoming teachers. The low salary offered to teachers is an important factor in determining whether or not potential candidates want to opt for teaching. Mrs Kashif, a science teacher at a small, primary-level private school points out that in most low-profile educational institutions, teachers are paid between the range of Rs2,000 to Rs3,000. Not only this but also, they are usually overburdened and have no choice but to cope with the work they are saddled with. In the end, it is simply not worth all the hard work.

Of course, one has to wonder why this slave-driving trend has caught on among schools. Certainly, things weren’t this bad a few years ago and one feels that rampant commercialisation is responsible for the drudgery that entails teaching. “In Pakistan, due to the unequal distribution of wealth, some people have a lot of money which they want to invest somewhere,” explains Mrs Kashif. She cites the example of her own institution, whose principal was a typical rich, bored housewife. Since her husband is an affluent sugar mill owner, he managed to establish a school for her in a bungalow in Gulshan-i-Iqbal to deal with her boredom. According to Mrs Kashif, the principal in question lives in Seaview and hardly ever comes to school. An administrator has been hired to run the school and as a result, there is no accountability with respect to the dealings of this administrator. Surprisingly, the school's student body appears to be increasing with each passing term. Mrs Kashif explains why: “People don't want to send their children to better schools because they feel they are located too far away from home. So children keep on coming from near-by homes.” So for school owners, it is business as usual — and a great one at that — because there is minimal investment on their part in order improve the quality of education being imparted to students. It is little wonder then that most teachers these days are constantly fretting over doing double shifts to make ends meet.

However, Professor Syed Imtiaz Ali of the Government City College, Karachi, feels the profession is also not without its fair share of hard work, and youth today want to take it a little too easy. In fact, he tells his students about the necessary requirements of teaching but most of them are not willing to take the initiative which means acquiring a Master’s degree and then appearing for a test, interview and demonstration during the screening process before they are hired. It appears that doing so is simply too much work for young people.

Low salaries have also been adversely affecting the quality of education imparted to students in such schools as well so only those people who have failed in all other professions or who have nothing better to do decide to become teachers. "Our school has only two teachers who have BEd degrees, while the rest of the staff comprises intermediate graduates. They hardly know the subject matter themselves; how can they be expected to impart knowledge to students?" says Mrs Kashif pointedly. As the number of private commercial schools around the city escalate exponentially, the reality of this large scale literary carnage sinks in deeper than one would want to admit.

At the higher secondary college level, however, Professor Syed Imtiaz sees the salary dilemma from an entirely different perspective because the teachers there hardly have any awareness about college level teaching jobs. Some teachers are, in fact, earning as much as or even more than doctors or MBAs. Unfortunately, it is only the poorly paid teachers who come into the limelight. Professor Imitiaz himself boasts of a salary close to Rs40,000, which, one of his students, found extremely shocking. One feels that students have preconceived notions about teachers which includes destitution but that isn’t always true.

In fact one often comes across teachers who provide private tuitions at home and earn about Rs0.1 million or more each month, but students remain largely unconvinced. According to Professor Imtiaz, it is this image that makes students reluctant to become teachers.

With the trend of contract basis employment catching on, one turns to another problem - job security. Sources reveal that teaching jobs are anything but permanent these days — contractual employment is the order of the day and so there is virtually no job security. It is no wonder then that young people are not willing to become teachers: "It is only when employers start providing their teachers job security and good salaries that we will see better results,” explains Mrs Waheed. This trend is also rampant in colleges with contracts running up to three years before they are renewed. Contract workers also don’t get any of the benefits that permanent employees are entitled to.

But while this trend may provide employers greater control, it has been creating disturbing results as well. In small, private schools, for example, teachers have a tendency to go away on sudden, unannounced leaves. As a result, the school administration has no choice but to employ substitute teachers in a hurry which means they don’t have time to screen them properly and, therefore, incompetent teachers are hired. This leads to further deterioration.

Apparently, the situation at higher secondary level is much worse - and politically driven by external forces - than at school level, as Professor Syed Imtiaz bluntly puts it: "We classify colleges as 'good', 'bad' and 'worse', although we claim to have a centralised system. The truth is that the placement body, Centralised Admissions College (CAP) is far from being centralised. It places students according to their grades into the already categorised colleges.” Clearly, this is a very biased system as teachers in the so-called bad colleges don’t bother with their students or aren’t good teachers to begin with. If anything, students should be distributed in equal proportions among colleges irrespective of their grades. Doing so will force all those teachers who are taking it easy to work hard on their students.

A final and perhaps one of the most significant factors which causes reluctance among people to become teachers is surprisingly neither monetary nor functional. "Values have changed," reveals Mrs Waheed. "Students don't respect teachers any more."

Some teachers place the onus of this change on parents, who don't teach their children to respect teachers. "Today, my students talk back at me and even threaten me that their parents are so influential or so rich. And surprisingly, even parents support and encourage them in such instances! If a child is being taught such values, of course he will become arrogant and rude," laments Mrs Kashif.

Of course, this is just one side of the equation. As unprofessional, untrained individuals have found their way into the teaching profession, their manner of conduct has also been affecting students as they openly use expressions that are inappropriate for a classroom environment. Mrs Kashif says teachers have forgotten that “you can only earn respect by giving others respect. Teachers today seem to have forgotten this."

The top-down way of managing things and indifference is perhaps as much to blame as the multi-tiered professional abuse that one must face as a teacher along with certain age-old haunting perceptions that prevents competent professionals from becoming teachers. One can only hope for a promising academic future for students. After all, some one has to teach our children.

The writer works as a sub-editor for Dawn

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