Today, many countries worldwide celebrate World Teachers’ Day, a day set aside by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), to honour one of the world’s oldest and hard working profession.
The UNESCO identifies the WTD as an opportunity to commemorate teachers organisations worldwide and also aims to activate support for teachers and to ensure that teachers continue to supply to the global framework of needs and requirements condu-cive in building a well-founded footing to a sound and greatly enabled future generation.
In line with the theme of this year’s celebration “Valuing Teachers, Improving their Status”, government at various levels particularly in Nigeria and the entire citizens should use the opportunity to reflect on the value placed on our teachers and the future of the teaching profession in the country.
No doubt, teachers play very pivotal role in any society. Nobody, no country can claim to be anything without the impact of teachers.
Incidentally, like the biblical saying of the stone that was rejected by the builders which became the cornerstone, teachers in many countries are not valued. They are paid less respect, less money than those in many other comparable professions. The story of how teachers’ salaries are owed for months in Nigeria is no longer news. Successive governments deem it unnecessary to invest in the education sector resulting in poor funding, staffing and training of teachers.
Even parents, who expectedly should value teachers for the formative roles they play for their children, most times do the opposite. Often stories are told of how some parents go to schools to abuse and insult teachers who discipline their children or wards for wrongdoing. “Teachers are not motivated or encouraged by the parents, government and the society”, recently lamented a teacher. The young woman made it clear that such negative attitude towards teachers was causing good, experienced educators to flee the ship of teaching.
Researchers have shown that a greater percentage of today’s teachers in the country take up the job not because they have interest in teaching, rather they are there because they could not secure better jobs.
Every smart graduate, even those that studied education, wants to be a banker, a politician, an oil company staff etc, abandoning the classrooms to the “unsharp, unsmart and unconnected ones”. No parent wants his or her child to be a teacher.
Not even teachers themselves want to encourage their children or any other person to take up the teaching profession so as not to end up poor, wretched, not valued.
If these are not signs that teaching as a profession is in trouble in Nigeria, then how can you describe it?
This is a situation that should be of great concern to anybody who means well for the country, especially our leaders. Yes, World Teachers’ Day should be a period to celebrate and appreciate those who have kept the teaching profession alive in the country despite all odds. But it should also provide our leaders, parents, stakeholders in the education sector and indeed entire Nigerians an opportunity to ponder on the future of the teaching profession and education entirely.
If education is truly the bedrock of any society, then it stands to reason that the welfare of those who run the sector should be of top priority. Teachers should be motivated, compensated empowered to perform their jobs. Training and re-training of teachers should no longer be toyed while government at all levels should invest adequately and properly in the education sector.
Most importantly, one thinks that going forward, only those who are genuinely interested in teaching should be employed and trained as teachers.
Making the teaching profession a dumping ground for all frustrated graduates will only help in destroying the education sector and indeed every other sector the more.
At a public function recently, the Governor of Katsina State, Alhaji Aminu Masari, attributed the lingering leadership problems facing the country to poor education. He said the quality of teachers to some extent directly impacts on the quality of students.
The former speaker of the House of Representatives said that if we continue to select those with poorer academic performance to train and teach our pupils and students, we cannot expect our students to be high achievers. If through their formative academic years, the teachers to be are separated from the brightest minds who are admitted in the universities, then the country is doomed. He said this in reference to the disparity in the cut-off marks for admission into the universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, with that of the colleges of education being the lowest.
Although many people have faulted Masari’s position, saying that while good education is an important element for good leadership, it only makes up for about 20% of the things that form a human being and make him a good leader, setting a lower standard for the teachers will definitely do the country more harm than good.
Teaching profession should be for the best brains as it is obtainable in many other civilized countries.
It is also advisable that teachers should see their profession as a noble one and be proud of it. This year’s celebration should cause the leaders of the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) at both federal, state and local government levels to reassess and rededicate themselves to their chosen profession by discharging their duties with renewed vigour and great sense of responsibility.
We need more dedicated, committed, passionate, smart teachers, especially in our public schools; not teachers who collect salaries even when they do not carry out their responsibilities to the pupils, students, the state and the nation. We no longer need teachers who sell all kinds of wears in the school premises during school hours, abandoning their duties.
To save the teaching profession, both the teachers, government, parents and indeed every Nigerian has a role to play and the time to start is now. Happy celebration, our worthy teachers.

Calista Ezeaku