By Victor Ogotomelli Ntaukira
In Malawi, we have created a strange definition of bravery.
A few weeks ago, some police officers did a brave thing. A British woman had been kidnapped by criminals in Blantyre. The officers tracked the kidnappers, exchanged gunshots, and rescued the woman alive. The whole nation celebrated. Days later, the Inspector General of Police announced their promotion to higher grades in the public service. Their salaries increased. Their lives changed forever. It was deserved.
A few months ago, the Malawi National Women’s football team, the Scorchers, did a brave thing. They fought the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations and finished second on the continent, bringing pride to a nation starved of good news. Lady soldiers in the team were promoted in the Malawi Defence Force. Again, deserved.
But here is the question that exposes our national hypocrisy. Why is bravely in uniform worthy of promotion, while bravery in the classroom is only worth cheap consumables?
A teacher who teaches at a school without laboratory, with few textbooks but produces best results in national examinations is called to the stage on World Teacher’s Day. He is given a mattress, a Mug Cup written “Best Teacher”, and a little cash. Then he goes back to the same grade he has had.
A police officer who does one brave act is promoted for life. A teacher who does a brave act every single day gets a mattress.
Let us think deeply about what a promotion means in Malawi’s public service.
A promotion is not a gift. It is a permanent structural change in a person’s economic life. When a police constable earning K400,000 is promoted to a sergeant earning K500, 000, that is an extra income. His family is transformed.
But a mattress is not a structural change. It is a token. It is a charity.
So when government says it is “honouring” teachers, it is a lie. You do not honour a profession with a mattress as if the teacher is a destitute.
Professionals are honoured with promotion, professional growth, and economic advancement.
By giving uniformed men promotions and teachers mattresses, government is sending a very clear message to every young Malawian that if you want to progress in life, do not join the teaching profession.
This is why at our Teachers’ Training Colleges today, most students are there because they failed to make it into better careers, not because they have passion for teaching.
This is why the best performing students at the universities do not want to join the teaching profession because we have made it a career for the hopeless. This is why, every day, well-qualified educators are leaving the profession for better ones.
The police officers who rescued the kidnapped woman risked bullets. The scorchers risked injury. That is physical bravery, and we must respect it.
But teachers’ bravery is moral, intellectual, and daily.
It is bravery to wake up at 4 a.m. in a remote CDSS where there is no electricity, walk 5 kilometres to school, and teach 150 students who share five textbooks, and mark their exercises every day.
It is bravery to teach a Form 4 class where half the girls are at risk of early marriage, and you have to counsel them, encourage them to stay in school and produce good grades.
It is bravery to stay honest in a system that rewards exam leakage. The teacher who refuses to leak exams, who refuses to inflate grades, who insists on teaching properly even when the whole system is corrupt, is braver than a soldier with a rifle.
A teacher’s enemy is not a kidnapper he can see, but poverty, ignorance, corruption and neglect.
Every police officer who rescued that British woman, every soldier who scored for the Scorchers, was first rescued by a teacher. That teacher taught them to read, to write, to count and to reason. Without that teacher, there would be no rescuer and no footballer. So why do we forget the root and reward only the fruit?
This is not just about teachers’ feelings. This unfairness has consequences that explain why Malawi remains poor despite billions in aid.
First, it destroys motivation. Why should a teacher work hard to produce a higher pass rate if he knows his reward is the same as a teacher who produces a 10% pass rate? Both will get their grade’s salary and the same mattress if lucky.
So the rational thing is to do the minimum. Automatic promotion for brave soldiers kills motivation for brave teachers.
The practice also contradicts Malawi’s Agenda 2063. The blueprint says Malawi wants to be an industrialised, self-reliant nation built on human capital. Human capital is built by teachers.
You cannot industrialise a country with a demoralised teaching force. Singapore, which Malawi loves to copy in speeches, pays its teachers higher than other public servants.
Finland, with the best education system in the world, selects its teachers from the top 10% of graduates and promotes them faster than any other civil servant. They understood that you cannot give your children a second-class teacher and expect first-class development.
Additionally, it creates a brain drain from education. A teacher at a secondary school will see that his former students who joined other departments are now earning more than him. Next time, that teacher will apply to become a clerk at the Immigration. Thus, Malawi loses a great teacher and gains an average clerk.
If we are serious as a nation, let us stop the tokenism and start the promotion.
Government, through the Ministry of Education, can establish automatic grade promotion for academic excellence. If a teacher, for instance, produces a subject pass rate of 80% for three consecutive years and with more than 15 distinctions each year, that teacher should be automatically promoted to the next grade.
Teachers need lifetime benefits, not consumables. A plot of land, a scholarship for postgraduate studies, a low-interest housing loan or a salary top-up of K100, 000 for 12 months will bring respect to a teacher than a mattress.
The coming of the Teachers’ Council of Malawi (TCM) can also be a blessing in disguise. One of its functions should be to vet teachers’ performance and recommend promotions directly to the Department of Human Resource Management and Development.
Teachers should be honoured publicly just like soldiers. When soldiers are promoted, the Commander-In-Chief shake their hands at State House. When will a teacher who produces the best MSCE results in the country ever be invited to State House for promotion by the President?
I am not saying that police officers and soldiers should not be promoted. They should as their bravery saves lives. What I am saying is that teachers’ bravery also saves lives. Only that it saves them slowly, invisibly and over a long period of time. A teacher saves a whole generation from ignorance in a lifetime.
A nation that gives lifetime promotion for saving one person, and a mattress for saving a generation, has lost its moral compass. Promote the teacher, not just the soldier. Otherwise, soon we will have plenty of soldiers to guard a nation that has no brains left to defend.
About the author: Ntaukira is Malawi’s veteran educator and freelance writer
Leave a Reply