WHY TEACHERS ARE HATED
Teachers are a hated lot. This is especially so with the people I have interacted with. In Kenya, teachers are hated with passion, and almost everybody has something negative to say about these members of the noble profession. A friend, for example, said that she is ‘allergic’ to teachers. Imagine that!
We tend to remember our worst teacher. And our Cabinet Secretary for Education describes teachers in the most derogatory terms that a professor of medicine could think of, which helps accentuate the hatred.
The employer of teachers shows contempt to teachers. Correspondence from the TSC to newsrooms and to teachers has words like warn, threaten and force, words which not only reveal the attitude of the employer to the employees, but also abet in the crime of infecting other people with the same attitude of contempt.
Other bodies demean teachers. The political class does not value them. Lawyers, doctors, engineers do not value them even though they owe their success to these people. Even parents, people whose children are under the watch of teachers, have tomes upon tomes of evil stuff that teachers are, that they do and stand for.
The reasons for this attitude are many and diverse as the people who harbor them. The first one is poor pay: how much do teachers earn in Kenya, relative to the other professionals? The second reason is the nature of the work the teachers do: making people do the right thing in the background of the inherent nature to do the unorthodox. Thirdly, teachers are found everywhere. They are a common-place people, people who have become very familiar with us. Remember familiarity breeds contempt. Lastly, they are appraised every time, everywhere. And, more often than not, in the scales of public opinion, they are tested, measured, weighed and found wanting. Hence the contempt. Hence the hatred.
But why hate somebody who is molding the life of your child? Please respect teachers.
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