Final part
TODAY WE submit the final part of our discourse on the transformation of education, started three weeks ago and emerging out of this year’s theme for World Teachers’ Day – The Transformation of Education Begins with Teachers.
Teaching may be described as being at the summit of the pyramid of humanitarian professions and teachers will always be a main focus in education and an indicator of its quality. As the agents of change and transformation, we demand working conditions that are safe and secure; conditions that foster innovation and motivation and where our pedagogical competence is acknowledged and respected. We demand schools that are well resourced to provide us with that enabling environment to effect the transformation that society has defined for us in this new global paradigm of technological uncertainty.
Schools must be given the autonomy and capacity to create and adapt curricular to its peculiar needs. Empowered teachers can, as they have demonstrated throughout the pandemic, transform the education system. At the core of educational quality is the hardworking teacher, who not only prepares students to become globally competitive through creativity and innovation, but also inspires them to become responsible citizens, through the maintenance and enhancement of good social order.
The transformation of the school is a team effort with the principal creating that enabling environment for new ideas and innovation to become an integral component of the school ethos and culture. As a transformational leader, experimentation must be actively encouraged, with principals willing to take calculated risks for their schools. Innovation must become the constant.
Transformation is contingent on the willingness to push the boundaries and step out of comfort zones. With confidence in teachers’ ability to lead through innovation, principals must strive to raise the level of personal commitment of the individuals who comprise the team, harnessing the synergy needed for the pursuit of organisational vision, mission and goals. Their charismatic, visionary and empowering leadership style must focus on enhancing the level of ethical aspirations that evokes transformation on both the principal and teacher.
Our antiquated model of worker production must be turned on its head. It’s a model that perpetuates inequity, benefitting a parasitic minority who owns citizens through unfair working contracts and who will use every means to maintain their elite status quo. It is a model that treats humans as capital to be controlled and exploited through the perpetuation of ignorance, hence the restriction of prescribed rigid curricula. It is a model that perpetuates a class differential that benefits the capitalist elite.
True education cannot be about certifying children as failures from the tender age of 11. We cannot continue to turn out large numbers of young minds that are convinced that they have no worth or value and are devoid of hope. We must understand the correlation between societal crime and crimi
