This week’s content centres on the burning question by millennials and directed at retired teachers like myself: What did you do that gave us this grotty existence?
It’s not so much an answer to what we did, but the unspoken implication that we did too little or nothing.
My story will be my version of how I, also, would love to be seen as a hero of the Struggle. Whether I am judged as defensive or lamely post-action is immaterial. This is my truth as lived by me and as verifiable in the records of our country.
First, I was born in 1939. Some claim that it was the cause of World War II, but I won’t take that much credit for trying to create change. It means that, historically, my career as a teacher straddles the years of Nationalist Party rule and the present rotten paw-paw we call the New South Africa.
We, old dogs, are accused of not causing one statue to fall. In our classes, we rather taught the children hymns, choruses and prayers for the rain to fall, not the statues, not anything. We were all about building a future, and while it didn’t include gratuitous violence, thuggery and nihilism, we did what damage we could to the racist rule.
Posts for teachers were scarce in our time. You had to be pretty good to be selected for limited berths in training colleges. I endeared myself to a white selection school inspector, telling him that I wasn’t going into teaching for the money. Teachers weren’t paid monthly, but weekly, very weakly. That got his attention. I got a shot at teacher training, I excelled, to the extent that the same Inspector arranged for my position as a teacher (Standard 5 / Grade 7) in 1959. Good for me. At least I was in!
But here is the thing. I wasn’t a complacent teacher who enjoyed the benefits of a government-secure teaching job. No. Since boyhood, my father schooled me in the evils of racism and the repugnance of laziness or insincerity. And these were the areas where I consider myself a Struggle hero. The story is almost comical.
Those were the years when Inspectors had the power to hire and fire. And it would happen that, in my first year of teaching, this “mentor” inspector visited my class to hear me state very clearly to a Grade 7 class: Johan van Riebeeck is not the father of this country (in Afrikaans). The upshot of such brazenness was the inspector’s dire utterance to me and the principal, whom he sent for: “You teach what is in the books we provide. You may have further education, but you teach what we pay you to teach. And as for promotion, you can forget about it for as long as we pay your salary.
There it is. The lady was not for turning. For the next 22 years that I taught at that school, I was overlooked for promotion time and again. I was always the highest qualified, with maximum success in Standard 5 / Grade 7. But often the promotions didn’t come, or outsiders were brought in to block my obvious candidacy. The Inspector died without rescinding his curse, much like the Ayatollah died before he could reverse the unfair accusations against Salman Rushdie.
I never bought into nepotism, favouritism, or changing horses in midstream. Right was right and wrong was wrong. Up to today, at 83, I have not deviated. I was never a favourite of the ruling government, but I never dropped my standards as a dedicated teacher. I tried to make a difference. It won’t get me a state or military funeral, but I have the satisfaction of never lying to my students and learners. Ever. ‘Nuff said.
* Literally Yours is a weekly column from Cape Argus reader Alex Tabisher. He can be contacted on email by [email protected].
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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