Teachers – quality or quantity?

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Are teachers competent in the subjects they are teaching? — File photo

THIS news about the small percentage of school teachers from Sarawak – allegedly only 50 out of the 500 earmarked to teach in the state this year – has become a political issue. For the parents (and grandparents!) of the 460,000 pupils now beginning their studies, the quality of teachers is more important than the statistics.

The parents are worried about the quality of teachers that their children are getting. For example, if the subject is English, are the teachers good at the language, able to improve the standard of English as a whole? For that matter, in any other subject?

How the teachers fit in or adapt to the circumstances they are placed in reflects the type of teachers they are – dedicated or just for a job to do.

Modern teachers are not expected to behave like saints or angels. The days of ideal teachers like the early Christian missionaries are over. There is no ideal teacher like JK Wilson of Budu fame anywhere now. I was under a few teachers from Kerala who taught the subjects that they were good at. Kerala was a communist-run state in India and yet teachers from there did not impart any ‘- ism’ to our school.

According to the Sarawak Teachers’ Union, there are several reasons why teachers from the peninsula would not teach in the state for long. Among them: those engaged to be married or if already married, one spouse is miles away from the other.

Contrast that with the behaviour of the locals; they

stay teaching much longer even until retirement. Their problem is the factor of home town; they prefer to teach in a school in their own home town. Imagine a situation: while the wife is teaching in Lio Mato, the husband is farming in Bau. Or a husband is teaching in Ba Kelalan and the wife in Sematan. They put up with it!

These are natural human problems. A smart government would think of ways and means to accommodate these human needs. That teacher engaged to be married soon should be allowed to get married first before posting him or her to Sarawak. Better still, look for someone else in Sarawak who is better prepared to work in the Land of the Hornbills. Forget about recruiting a teacher with such problems. That policy of integrating and uniting people through the medium of teaching is not for him or her. There are other tools or dimensions of integration and unity – political, economic, socio-cultural, to mention a few. The education authorities would save a lot of trouble by concentrating on the local resources. Continue to train young men and women from Sarawak, and recruit them if they are good for teaching purposes.

The news – about only 50 out of 500 teachers being from Sarawak – is being disputed by some quarters. The number doesn’t matter; what matters is the quality of the teachers. That one about to get married is out for the time being. That spouse longing for the company of the other is also out.

Concentrate on those who are dedicated, ready and willing to teach the subjects they are trained for, not of religions nor of political ideologies other than the Rukun Negara.

It is impossible to produce an ideal teacher. So we have to make do with what we have.

Surely it is not impossible to post a married couple of teachers to the same school, and to provide them with decent living quarters so they can rear their family together!

Unfortunately, we are not living in an ideal world. There are a lot of imponderables and uncertainties in the way.

Some teachers must be prepared to face difficulties, especially those serving in certain rural areas. Teachers before them faced worse problems and yet they managed to produce many decent citizens for Sarawak.

The Sarawakian teachers have the problem of their own: they prefer to teach in their own hometown. That’s a natural human factor too, to be near a sick parent or other humanitarian problems. That, I’m sure, must have been taken into consideration by those in the Education Department when placing teachers but at the same time they should be strict as not to allow those teachers to bully the department. They cannot get all what they want. If they are dedicated teachers, they should teach wherever they are placed. All civil servants have to go to where they are posted, why not teachers?

The number of teachers from Peninsular Malaysia to be deployed to schools in Sarawak as part of the national aim to “integrate and unite the people” has become an issue because this year the number of local graduate teachers is small while that of those from the peninsula is getting larger.

The Sarawak Bumiputera Teachers Union thinks that some 70 per cent of the 30,000 teachers here are Sarawakians and that’s not a small number.

This is a numbers game. STU wants more locals to teach in Sarawak. That sounds more constructive.

However, in my opinion, teachers can come from anywhere and in any number as long as they are good in the subjects that they teach, know how to impart knowledge, are sincerely dedicated to the profession, and don’t have a hidden agenda like trying to interfere with their students’ culture or religion.

Why teachers from Peninsular Malaysia have been made an issue has somewhat baffled me. Are they not quality teachers?

In his paper presented at the first conference organised by the Institute of Strategic and International Studies of Malaysia in 1985, the then director-general of education Datuk Abdul Rahman Arshad, observed: “…As the primary moving force in economic, political and social change, education can be a powerful means of welding the disparate elements of nation. However, it can also work in the opposite direction. If education is not properly designed or controlled in a multiracial society it can harden the lines of division, aggravate tension, and create racial polarisation.”

I think the good Datuk’s view is as valid as it was 30 years ago. Perhaps, there’s the perception that when large numbers of peninsula teachers are an issue, the locals are at a disadvantage in terms of privileges and promotional prospects. That may indeed cause a hardening of division, aggravation of tension, and creation of racial polarisation. I hate to think the teachers are the main causes of all these problems. By and large they are innocent.

Teachers implement the national education policy. If they are choosy over where they are placed in the country, then they should enter other professions where they can equally contribute to nation building. If that’s what they really want to do, and didn’t just choose teaching as a ‘job’ with a pension at the end of it.

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