Let’s pay our teachers well, and also question the quality of their service

When I was a university student (Mr Wilson Sossion, the fire-breathing Knut chairman was my yearmate and neighbour in the halls of residence), an incident took place during the schools music (or was it drama?) festival finals which horrified and amused the country in equal measure.

Some joker UT was invited to introduce a school dance troupe from a quiet corner of this expansive republic.

The dancers might have been agile, but the teacher was stone illiterate. Through the fog of time, I recall her introduction going along the lines:

“Fellow judges, adjudicators, mboys and ngaros, rady and gentruman. Because time does not belongs to ours…” She became a national scandal and was sacked on the orders of an embarrassed minister of Education.

The placard carried by a teacher which was published by the Daily Nation on Wednesday was a traumatic reminder that some of the teachers on whose behalf Knut has called out a strike do not have sophisticated numeracy and spelling skills.

Knut is, unusually, making a  case for the quality of education, rather than the quality and girth of the stomachs of teachers.

It is a great thing that the union is concerned about the welfare of the children. But as the man who will pay for it all, I am also worried about the quality of the teacher.

The problem with trade unionism, along with its many good points, is that it puts its elbow in the eye of demand and supply.

When workers negotiate as a corpus, sometimes they get a price which they otherwise could not in a free market. And they are able to sell damaged goods since they have the buyer by the scrotum.

I am not saying that teachers, or any living soul, should be paid Sh10,000 salary. Absolutely not. Besides, I think my buddy Mr Sossion is a grand fellow and I love and support him. Hell, I even like his fat friend.

But since I am not running for office and I don’t care for popularity, and given that I have been a teacher, albeit many centuries ago, I would like to ask a question: what is the evidence that the problem with the quality of education that children in public schools are getting is the quantity of teachers?

When you become a teacher, it is a call to serve. What is wrong with teaching long hours and working hard? Is that not the way to set an example and shape the minds of those whom you teach? Does Knut know how many hours I and my colleagues work?

There are many teachers who do a wonderful job and we remember and honour them. But there are also teachers who spend all their time drinking busaa, running their boda bodas, or fornicating with their students.

It is not the great teachers, the ones who made us by teaching all the time, including prep, who need time off the job they love.

These are not the ones asking for the employment of more teachers so that they can teach less. I think it is the other lot.

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Sudan is ruled by crafty fellows. Whereas I deplore their treatment of the South for not just the past 50, but many other years, perhaps centuries, before, I cannot help but note that the North is always a step ahead of the South.

The whole of East Africa was looking forward to the membership of the South in the East African Community.

There is a strong sense of kinship with the South, partly because of shared tribal roots and a sense of empathy because of its suffering at the hands of the brutes in the North.

East Africans will probably not know what to make of the fact that Khartoum beat South Sudan to the draw in  applying for membership to the EAC.

Actually, some people in East Africa would rather not integrate. A friend was deported from a neighbouring country five years ago under a law meant to get rid of vagrants, prostitutes, and carriers of venereal diseases (none of which he was guilty of).

The prohibition was subsequently lifted. When my friend visited that country last week, he was promptly arrested and detained.

He was only released after ministerial-level intervention. The fact that he had a letter from that country’s minister of immigration showing that he was no longer prohibited did not matter.

The officials maintained that their minister had not informed them that he had lifted the prohibition. If officials in our countries mistreat nationals of other member countries to that extent, what is the point of integration?

mmutuma@ke.nationmedia.com