By Saul Gwakuba-Ndlovu 

ZIMBABWE’S educational sector’s professionals have been, in the past few years, demanding an increase in their remuneration and have threatened to go on strike on a couple of occasions.  

That has been particularly the case with the primary and secondary sector; a development that has created a virtual risk over the country’s entire educational system and programme. 

Education simply means acquired knowledge by means of systematic instruction or through research and/or experience. 

The word ‘education’ is derived from the Latin word ‘educare’ which means ‘to lead forth’. 

We need not enter into detailed analysis of the etymological origins of that word as that would oblige us to give a long narration of the Greek origins of Western education of which that of Zimbabwe is an extension because of British colonialism. 

What we need to highlight are the benefits of education to the social, economic, political and cultural progress of every nation. 

Essential to the effective propagation of various skills, ideas, information, experiences and perceptions (all these comprising what is called knowledge) are teachers; that is to say, people who are professionally trained to impart knowledge to recipients whose ages range from infancy to adulthood. 

There is a difference of opinion about whether teaching is a profession or a vocation; two words which, in fact, mean exactly the same thing. 

The only distinction is that people whose education is initially associated with Christian missionaries tend to attribute the same unyielding religious commitment and absolute dedication of the missionaries to the propagation of God’s word to the school teachers, the first of whom were trained by missionaries in the early years of the spread of education in Zimbabwe’s African communities. 

Such people lose sight of the fact that virtually every Christian missionary took the ‘vow of poverty’ as an extremely important part of his or her ordination. 

Before the Government assumed total responsibility over teacher- training institutions, various Christian denominations trained their own school teachers

Those people tended to treat teaching with unconditional commitment. 

The above analysis does not mean or imply that they were ill-advised or wrong to have such an attitude. 

Teachers are to the nation’s social progress what the police force is to security. 

Every government would be most unwise to surrender its country’s educational services to private individuals just as it would to abandon its public health system to private practitioners. 

While private enterprise may, and should, be allowed to play a role in the provision of such services, including those of the energy sector, the government should own and control a much larger percentage for patently obvious strategic and security reasons. 

Since national education is essential to all aspects of national development, it was thus vital for the Government to take over the training of school teachers from missionaries just as it is responsible for the training of the police force. 

We are certainly all agreed that knowledge is most vital, and has been most vital, to the sustained existence of the human race. 

At the dawn of human history, parents were responsible for passing on knowledge to their children. 

That knowledge was about food, hostile creatures and weather elements, diseases, inter-personal, inter-family and inter-community relations, and assumptions about the unknown, about our bodies and about those of other animals.

This knowledge was refined and developed with the passage of time to such an extent that we can now fly fearlessly over the clouds or live unperturbed under the mighty seas. 

Credit must be given, undoubtedly, to teachers, right across the entire educational spectrum, from kindergarten to university. 

Appreciation of all this in a modern state should be reciprocal; that is, it should be shown by those who appoint and pay the teachers, and by making available financial resources in a national budget annually. 

School-teachers are educated enough (or expected to be) to be able to analyse their ministry’s budget so that they do not demand that which is well beyond it. 

The national budget represents, or ought to represent, a nation’s financial capability its resources being procured by either taxation and/or by borrowing. 

It would be by far much wiser for teachers’ representative organisations to submit budget proposals to their ministry, especially the part pertaining to their members’ remuneration, to the finance minister well before the national budget date, say at the latest 90 days earlier. 

That would enable the ministry to have an idea of the teachers’ remuneration expectations, and considering for inclusion or otherwise in the budget. 

It is this author’s considered opinion that in national matters, particularly those involving workers and employers, there is certainly nothing better than negotiations, which are generally referred to as ‘dialogue’ these days. 

If it is agreed to hold such discussions, the parties concerned would have initiated a constructive first step; if one party demands 40, 50 or 60 percent of whatever is under discussion and the other party is willing to give not more than 10 or 15 percent, both parties need to haggle and compromise instead of giving each other ultimatums. 

A ‘give and take’ approach in virtually all negotiations is vital. Strikes are acceptable only in situations where one party is irrevocably intransigent. 

School-teachers are educated people who should be realistic and not fanciful or wishful in their thinking. 

They should always remember that national budgets are always based on actualities and possibilities and not on wishful thinking. 

It is true that the country’s cost of living has escalated and also that the nation has been passing through a precarious economic trajectory but towards, hopefully, a better condition. 

While we are experiencing that, it would be self-defeating for those who carry the torch of national enlightenment (the school teachers) to abandon the country’s future (the school-children) to a dark fate. 

The best professional teacher is one who has immense love for children and people in general, plus an insatiable love of knowledge and its continual acquisition. 

In addition to these two qualities, he or she must deeply understand that teaching produces a nation’s citizens whose commitment to their country should be more than commitment to themselves as individuals, that means, simply stated, patriots.

Teaching has never been meant to be a wealth-generating profession, but a respectable pursuit with the possibility of a relatively comfortable existence.  

It is most important, particularly to school-teachers, to acknowledge that every school day lost to schoolchildren is an unquantifiable liability to the nation and that every non-school-going  child is a virtual social danger and an economic burden to Zimbabwe. 

Zimbabwe inherited an education legacy based on that of Britain where a law had been passed as early as early as 1406 empowering all male parents to send their children to any school in England. 

In 1918, another law was passed making education compulsory up to 14 years of age. In 1944, that law was amended to make school attendance in Britain compulsory up to 16 years of age. 

That age was raised to 17 years in 1947. 

Although British missionaries who were in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) did not have the power to implement that law in their respective circuits, they used a great deal of their influence to that effect. 

In countries, such as Israel, governments do not allow anything to disturb schools. 

When the Israelis were fighting for independence from the Mandated Power (Britain), they disrupted whatever they could, except schools. 

That was because they knew that Israel’s future success depended on an educated population. 

We wish that of Zimbabwe no less! 

Saul Gwakuba-Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo-based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328 136 or through email. sgwakuba@gmail.com