Discovering the Teacher Soldier

Beyond teaching

Teachers, depending on the context, may have different profiles and their prerogatives, both official and unofficial, are not the same. Between the skills-based approach and the objectives-based approach put forward in the pedagogy of several sub-Saharan countries, there are teachers whose prerogatives go far beyond the purely pedagogical framework.

So what are these additional tasks performed by these teachers? Do they still have the possibilities to achieve what is asked of them? How can their conditions be improved?

1-The enrolment of students: beyond the classroom

In their article entitled "Les difficultés au travail des enseignants" (The difficulties at work of teachers), Christophe Hélou and Françoise Lantheaume present the enrolment of students or learners as the first problem that teachers encounter.

It is an enrolment through the topics addressed, the way they are approached, the timing etc. in order to arouse the interest of learners. While this enrollment is part of the teachers' prerogatives, there is another that is squarely outside the functions of this educational actor: out-of-classroom engagement.

In principle, when the student crosses the threshold of the school, he or she is the responsibility of the teachers, but there are contexts in which the teacher is obliged to circulate in the neighborhood, in markets or any other place different from or outside the school to mobilize students. This has been seen in northern Cameroon where teachers are often forced to meet with students outside of schools in order to convince them to rejoin the classroom.

Brandon, a secondary school English teacher in the central region of Cameroon, points out that many students desert classes for hunting or trading activities and that they are often forced to go outside the school to invite students to take part in class. There are several reasons for disinterest in school: pastoral activities, trade, and recently the war which worsens the hunger. However, whatever the reason, it is not the role of teachers to mobilize students in this way.

The extra-task role does not stop only at enrolling students, teachers very often turn into masons or carpenters.

2-Teaching masonry does not mean one is a mason

In September 2022, a story yet not isolated, caused a sensation in Northern Cameroon. Indeed, a teacher assigned to a school found herself building huts to shelter her students.

Margueritte was forced to look for tree trunks and other objects to build a classroom in her school. This is the public school of Laïnde-Bilonde in the third district of the city of Garoua, the regional capital of North Cameroon.

It's a school with about 500 students but only two classrooms built of permanent materials. This is a task assigned to a teacher that is far from her prerogative. In such a context, the teacher is a jack-of-all-trades, which leads us to question her performance. The teacher is certainly a mason, but of knowledge and not of buildings, unless masonry is one of his hobbies. In some localities where classrooms are sufficient...two or three teachers are assigned for six classes.

3-One teacher for all!

A tour of several schools in sub-Saharan Africa brings to light an overwhelming reality. About a year ago, I was in the Highlands, one of the departments in the Western region of Cameroon. It is a region where the schooling rate (73.25%) is one of the highest in the country, but in the remote corners of this region, the lack of teachers is glaring. In a village in this department, I noticed that a public school with six classrooms had only three teachers. I am not going to name the school so as not to make a fixation, but this is not an isolated situation. In other schools, the situation is more visible.

4-How to stop asking too much of teachers in the tropics?

Build infrastructure.

Despite the progress in education, infrastructural problems are legion. If we admit that education is the foundation of society's development, we might as well make it a priority and provide classrooms worthy of the name so that teachers can fully perform their duties: preparing lessons, delivering them, evaluating and supervising students. rude, so, in order to motivate pedagogues and avoid the abandonment of posts, states can provide them with housing, even temporarily.

Recruiting trained teachers.

According to International Education, "Cameroon's public schools lack teachers while thousands of trained teachers are unemployed. An unfortunate mismatch when many African countries lack qualified teachers." This is a sad reality whose only solution lies in the massive recruitment of trained teachers so that we no longer have one teacher for every three or four classrooms and with drifty salaries.
Train more teachers

Sub-Saharan Africa would need 11 million teachers. The most affected countries are Chad, Mali, Niger and CAR. Training here must be contextualized. Because the difficulties are not the same. The gap between the countryside and the cities is enormous.

Other factors, such as the lack of electricity, prevent a certain number of technologies from being used in the countryside. As a result, while waiting to solve the problem of infrastructure, the teacher must be trained, at least in classical pedagogy.
Equitable distribution of trained teachers throughout the country.

In some African countries such as Cameroon, there is a concentration of teachers in the city centers. It happens that a class in the heart of Yaoundé, the capital, has three teachers while in the outskirts, one teacher manages more than three classes. It is therefore imperative to distribute teachers equitably across the national territory.
Observe the teacher as a soldier

That is, the one who can intervene in difficult contexts that go beyond simple security or safety, may be admirable, but that is not their role. The difficult contexts in which they work often make them admirable.

However, it is obvious that their charges do not allow them to fulfill the purely pedagogical specifications. The soldier teacher is therefore one who works in difficult conditions and is very often required to perform tasks that have nothing to do with pedagogy.

Illustration: DepositPhotos - artavet

Bibliography

Kouagheu, Josiane "In Cameroon, an underground elementary school educates children "traumatized by war"
Online, https://urlz.fr/kHTi

Hélou, Christophe and Lantheaume, Françoise, 2008, "Difficulties at work for teachers,"
https://journals.openedition.org/rechercheformation/833

Nyet? Paul Basile Odilon "Working conditions, professional vulnerability and performance of teachers in public secondary schools in the far north of Cameroon," Revue Espace Territoires Sociétés et Santé
En ligne, https://urlz.fr/kHTa