This piece was intended for use on this page last week Saturday, October 8, 2022 to commemorate the 2022 World Teachers Day (WTD). However, the space was conceded to the piece on Maulid in honour of the greatest human personality. Last week Saturday coincided with the celebration of the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, Salla-llahu Alayhi Wa Salam (SAW); being the 12th day of the Islamic lunar month of Rabiul Awwal, 1444AH. But given their role in the development of every nation, it’s always time to discuss teachers and their ‘noble’ job.
Several times in the past, this column spoke for Nigerian teachers and the predicaments they suffer for being teachers. This was always done without necessarily waiting for the annual event of the WTD. Today, the focus shall be re-directed; putting some of the teachers on the defensive side with the hope that their conscience shall thereafter speak to their conscience in the loudest tone.
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Within the context of Nigerian cultural belief, teachers are thought to belong to that category of workers whose reward for the job they do is believed to be in heaven. But how come about this common presumption? The background to this notion could be explained from orthodox and modern perspectives.
The period before corruption found its way into the psyche and blood of Nigerians plausibly qualifies as the orthodox era in Nigeria’s cultural history. Those who lived in the orthodox era believed that no amount of money paid to a teacher would suffice to compensate for his commitment and sacrifices in the training of young minds to become future leaders who have requisite knowledge and character for leadership roles. Nigerians of the country’s orthodox years further believed that since every material-reward offered in this world, no matter how huge, may last for only a while and therefore exhaustible, they rather wished that teachers who deserve an infinite recompense should have their reward reserved in the heavens where life itself is immortal and reward is divine, inexhaustible and interminable.
Low wages, embarrassing narratives of teachers and the lowly-pedigree associated with the teaching job in Nigeria today altogether combine to form an opinion for people in modern times. Thus, the society which has dumped substantial part of the age-long regard accorded teachers is now wishing and encouraging them to wait until they reach heaven for a more befitting remuneration. God is prayed to keep in the heaven all the reward (tangible and the intangible), which teachers were denied during their active years of service.
Modern Nigeria is one country where teachers are least appreciated. Go through the list of the 2022 recipients of national honours to see if this assertion is not true of teachers who receive less recognition than Nollywood stars, musicians and comedians. The molestation, harassment and assault of teachers in the course of their duty by unruly parents speak much of how teachers are poorly valued in Nigeria. This may also explain why Nigerian teachers are generally mocked for their patience over consistently-delayed or unpaid entitlements.
Let us go back to our main discourse for the day, “teachers’ road to heaven”, because public perception of teachers and their job requires a separate conversation. The question now is, what happens in the case of teachers who couldn’t make it to heaven? The attainment of heaven is not automatic. Yes, not every teacher shall make it to the heaven; more so in a modern society where learners have rather become victims in the dirty hands of those, who as teachers, are supposed to be custodians, protectors, and caretakers of students. Teachers’ road to heaven, therefore, may not be as easy as imagined by many including the teachers themselves.
Just as it is usual to have deviants in every system built upon dos and don’ts including religion, it would be natural for bad eggs to also exist among teachers. The job of a teacher is one that is strictly based on trust and confidence. Expectedly, teachers are parents, guardians, educators, trainers, and caregivers who provide every necessary attention, guide, protection, supervision, mentoring, monitoring, direction, and counselling needed by the innocent minds put under their custody to learn and become the best of those who are useful to themselves and their society. Any breach of these occupational responsibilities absolutely makes the teacher a condemned betrayer. The attempt by some corrupt teachers in modern Nigeria to carry this act of betrayal to another level where conscience is thrown to the dogs further sets them on the devil’s path.
A lecturer that extorts students through handouts, assignments, practicals, grades or other acts of double-dealing would certainly miss the road to heaven. A teacher that allowed a student who should have failed a course to pass or even graduate through money-for-grades, leaking exam questions or results mutilation deserves a name worse than that given to a betrayer. If the student who ‘passed’ through ‘grade-sorting’ (or other fraudulent forms of aiding weak students to pass exams) graduated from a medical college, the dubious lecturer or professor who was paid to pass him only succeeded in giving the student a “license to kill patients” in the hospital he found himself after graduation. The lecturer involved in this kind of scandalous monkey business shall not only benefit from the sins earned in every life killed for non-competence by the ‘un-qualified’ doctor but shall also never find any route that leads to heaven. Who knows whether the same lecturer that was paid to pass the medical-student or his relation could, sooner or later, become a victim of his own dirty dealings in the clinic or operating-theater manned by the latter; his former student m?
The later-generation practice called extra-lesson, which I find ridiculous of teachers, their job and the education system particularly at the basic level of the system, has also been ‘developed’ by teachers into a tool for trading grades or scores and for sexually harassing female students. A teacher that sexually harasses students is, perhaps, the worst of all betrayers of trust in the educational system and shall be farthest from seeing any of the gates that takes righteous people to heaven. May Allah save our society by inspiring teachers to remain God-fearing and committed to their job so that the heaven believed by all to be reserved for them could be attained, amin.
