LETTER - I was saddened to read that 40% of teachers may quit this noble profession in the next five years, according to a report released by the Department of Basic Education – “Stressed-out teachers want to quit profession”, The Star, October 1.
What surprised me most was that the major reason for teacher stress is not violence in schools, which is also a factor, but work overload. This is nothing new. During my days as a teacher of English, we constantly complained about the marking and administrative work.
However, thanks to the activism of our Subject Societies, a professional wing of our union, Teachers Association of SA (Tasa) – now defunct – and the empathetic approach of a few enlightened subject inspectors, the drudgery of marking and paper work was gradually alleviated by creative solutions, without sacrificing the quality of education.
Even at universities today, lecturers come up with creative strategies to manage large classes and the resultant marking load.
For the past decade, I have been reading about the CAPS curriculum and the burden this has placed on teachers, with the emphasis on assessment rather than teaching. What I find ironic about this sad state of affairs is that the people running education in South Africa today were once affiliated to the SA Democratic Teachers Union. Another irony: when I came as a school inspector of English to the old Transvaal in the early 1990s, it was this same teachers’ union that declared school inspectors persona non grata!
A young Sadtu official came to my office in Lenasia to instruct me not to visit schools as per the dictates of Sadtu. Defying his injunction, I continued to visit teachers, who requested my assistance. This Sadtu official was amply rewarded in 1994: he became a Member of Parliament!
The solution to the problem of teacher stress lies in the hands of the education officers who run Education, and the teachers themselves.
If Sadtu became more professionalised as a teachers’ union rather than a political lapdog, it could engage critically and academically with the Education authorities and even the minister of education to come up with creative solutions to the burden of administrative work.
Good teachers gain immortality during their lifetime and even after. They are too precious a commodity to be abused by a mindless bureaucracy.
Prof Harry Sewlall - North West University
The views expressed in this letter do not necessarily reflect the views of The Mercury
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