Three cheers to all you educators who stood tall and together in the recent strike action.
Several things about the strike warmed my heart. One was the huge media and public sympathy that the action received — unusual when you think that most people only support such protests if they stand to benefit personally. Many parents decided to take the day off from work themselves — not as industrial action, but because their children needed looking after as their teachers took to the streets.
I also enjoyed how the government’s apparent strategy to draw out negotiations for six long months — in order to make use of the emotional lever of matric exams to garner public sentiment against the strike — also backfired. If this point is accurate — as the teacher unions claim — then it is a horribly cynical move on the employer’s part.
Another striking feature (yes, this is a pun) was the wonderful fact that the action transcended race and class. Even the ultra-conservative Suid-Afrikaanse Onderwysersunie, whose members decided not to join the strike, registered an important swing in sentiment: while only 9% of its membership was prepared to strike back in 1999, this time around 27% of the 20 000-odd members was prepared to join the strike.
What a resounding victory for teacher unity this exercise was — regardless, in some respects, of its impact on negotiations. For once, it wasn’t the township schools in chaotic disarray while the suburban schools piously looked the other way. What a treat it was to see the front-page photos of dimple-kneed, middle-aged white women learning to toyi-toyi for the first time in their lives, carrying placards demanding that teachers be treated with the dignity they deserve.
And that is the third aspect I appreciated: the strike was not only about the technical and material issues — as important as they are — but fundamentally an expression that teachers deserve to be more valued, not only in terms of material benefits, but also in terms of the moral recognition and status given to them by society.
So how do you measure the true value of a teacher?
Practices of other professions — like selling, where you can figure out the worth of individuals by the revenue they contribute to your company — certainly don’t help here. Neither can you use indices like those appropriate to manufacturing, where you can see how many cars have exited the production line and appraise a worker’s value that way.
Because, as we all know, the immensely powerful role of educators is moulding the characters and minds of our nation’s youth. In fact, I thought Minister of Education Naledi Pandor expressed her appreciation of the huge demands of teaching, and its attendant significance, rather well at a recent event at Orange Farm in Gauteng.
Said Pandor, ‘Teaching requires, above all, enormous reserves of energy and patience. It is physically, intellectually and emotionally demanding. The maintenance of order and classroom discipline, while fostering a culture of cooperation and learning, especially in this day and age, is not easy. It requires dedication and integrity.
‘Teachers are, next to parents, the most important adult role models in children’s lives. Education is fundamentally a character-forming and developmental process. The values expressed and the values promoted are central to and underlie outcomes, teaching methods and assessment. They also reflect the authority relationships in the classroom.”
At the time of going to press, it was still not clear whether the unions were going to accept the revised offer from the government. But no matter what the final percentage increase is, the fact of the matter is this: our teachers, especially the best ones, are simply invaluable.