Opinion / Columnist
The question of language teaching
15 Jul 2014 at 03:48hrs | Views
The hot issue of language teaching(that teachers who cannot speak local languages should not be allowed to teach in a particular Region(s)
This would create regionalism. This now amounts to discrimination. It amounts to the breach of the human rights of the teachers in question. The system has been functioning well for all the past years. People should put aside the issue of language.
Any teacher who is qualified can teach any language if help is rendered to them by their colleagues. In all schools there is collegiality, so this is plausible.
Any trained teacher if given the opportunity, they can learn to teach the language in question, if they are continuously helped by their work mates. It has always been the case in the past.
Even in other jurisdictions is the same thing ,that is in South Africa. They can be assisted instead of turning them away.
This will create divisions in the country. The government should continue with the previous policy of deploying teachers. The system has been functioning well.
These same people who are pushing for this type of recruitment will in turn complain in time to come that there are inequalities entrenched in the government system. Why? This is because in Harare they would want to employ someone who is proficient in Shona so that they can deal effectively with the problems of the people in Harare. Conversely, in Matabeleland they would only employ people who speak Ndebele. That is ,they would follow a parallel behaviour. One needs to be very careful in embracing such an unreasonable and unsound policy. This will only polarise the country.
The government has to stop this idea as soon as possible. And make it compulsory for the Ministry of Education to deploy teachers were there is a need. I am sure all people of sound mind will agree with this idea. Some changes are unnecessary .
They only create problems or reawaken problems of the past.Everyone needs to ponder over this issue. Everyone needs to scrutinize this carefully and think of the repercussions that it may breed.
'One Zimbabwe , one nation'. The possible long term solution is to encourage teachers to learn both main languages or all languages spoken in Zimbabwe.
The teachers' Colleges can have people employed on temporal bases to come and teach the other languages during the course of teacher training.
Source - Njabulo [impartial]
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