Mr. Yorke is a 7th grade
science teacher in a private school in Ghana. He holds an MSc in Physics. Recently
in conversation with Mr. Yorke I asked what his greatest concern is in his
work. His response surprised me.
The issue of primary concern to Mr.
Yorke relates to the attitude of kids to learning (in his school). Emphasis is
mine. To his mind the one objective he would wish to realise is to get the kids
to appreciate that their learning experience is ultimately for their own
benefit and not that of teachers or parents. Mr. Yorke feels that kids in
school today tend to act as if being in school is really to please parents and
teachers; so homework is done to make teachers especially happy and so is
picking up a book to study. Left to the kids, they would be playing with their
various electronic gadgets and chatting about movies and music. Teachers who
think otherwise are therefore labelled as “boring” and rather out of tune with
the times. (I should say this is hardly surprising. Unfortunately though, Mr. Yorke
believes that school authorities and parents alike tend to accommodate and to
some extent support the behaviours that have led him to this assertion.
To buttress his point, Mr. Yorke
speaks about kids openly threatening to get teachers sanctioned when teachers
insist on appropriate behaviours in school. One student is quoted as saying to
his teacher at the threat of punishment; “you dare not do this, I will get you
fired”. Mr. Yorke also offers the example of a teacher who was made to
apologize to a student who had received
some harsh words from the teacher for bad behaviour and a parent who came in to
school to “dress down’ a teacher who had seized his child’s mobile phone in
school; mobile phones are not allowed in school. In all these cases, the school
administrators intervened by apologising to the parents concerned for the
teacher’s inappropriate conduct and failed to follow through with disciplinary
action on the student involved. In Mr. Yorke’s view, the challenge boils down
to the fact that (African, in this case Ghanaian) parents have ceased to raise
their kids in the ways of our specific cultural expectations; meaning respect
for the elderly and for authority. I think more than that, the premium that
majority of our middle class society (whose kids attend schools the like of
which Mr. Yorke teaches in) place on formal education is diminishing as the
character of middle class society itself is changing but this debate is for
another place.
Teacher motivation is an important
issue in Ghana today and is often pointed to as one of the key challenges to
quality education. Usually the factors listed as affecting teacher motivation
include low salary levels, lack of resources and inadequate school facilities, accommodation
problems and the like, in the public system. Though the school in which Mr.
Yorke teaches is not a public school, many private schools face similar
challenges especially with regards to pay and general conditions of service; in
some cases written contracts and agreed conditions of service do not exist.
Mr. Yorke’s particular concern about
his work situation is an example of the effect of institutional and societal responses
to the challenges of increasing access to information, exposure to and
interaction between diverse cultures, increasing awareness of rights of
individuals to name some, in our time on teacher motivation. While these
responses have focused on exploiting the potential of science, technology and
the process of globalization for purposes of advancement, Mr. Yorke’s insight seems
to suggest a failure in addressing the potentially destructive implications. The result is sub-standard management and regulation of the education system and not only the likes of Mr. Yorke are the worse for it.
What is your
greatest concern in your work or at your work place and if you work in the
education sector, do you share Mr. Yorke’s concern?
