In Need of Educators

The qualification under the present system for employment of public school teachers is sufficient; it rigidly establishes set of requirements. Employment, as we know it, is tough especially for teaching positions. Job opportunities for teaching are lesser by a quarter than for other job opportunities. Call centers hire agents by hundreds; schools hire teachers by a quarter of that size. Hence, aside from being tough, opportunities for teaching are few.

Teachers’ Education Institutions, ours for one, produce dozens of education graduates and still counting. To illustrate, the Education and Teacher Training Department boasts of its huge population. As a result, the number of education graduates is bigger than the number of graduates of other courses as this has rippling effect, year after year.

Due to the lack of this oversight, the population of education graduates who weren’t able to land any teaching positions is getting huge. Although a confluence of factors is responsible for the dismal employment track – such as the slow progress of the education system worsen by the increasing of drop out incidence – we can’t deny that institutions which are responsible for schooling soon-to-be-teachers are responsible for the increase in unemployed or mis-employed of education graduates. It is an inherent culpability of an institution if it fails to assure its graduates of any job opportunities.

High school graduates, and their fate, in our province are also partly to blame. After they graduated in high school, these, who are soon to be college graduates, had recklessly chosen education courses, not due to unguided choice but merely due to its accessibility and affordability.

It is appalling to note how the education graduates and even graduates from other courses landed jobs not related to their field of specialization but nevertheless had provided the workplace the skills and competency. It is more appalling to note at how one would feel a deep remorse in the fate he has squandered into. Recourse for such includes the slow acceptance of the kind and conditions of work and the eternal damnation of it.

Another thing so troubling with college students nowadays is their lack of foundation, poor nature and lack of nurture. But we just don’t know when the luck would tide in their favor, more like of a rags-to-riches and stupid-to-brilliant story indeed, which is so common because of the hope it promises to the people.

In our part as students we need to deeply contemplate this: Am I worthy to be an educator? Do I have more knowledge than my prospective students? Can I share it to them? Or better store the knowledge in me and be a physicist, astronomer or physician instead? Better yet, is the salary the teacher will receive enough to help each and every member of my family and extended relatives who were in dire need? Am I innately selfless? Am I a principled man? Am I strategic in my ways and means?

There would be many ideas to implore before we will tread the path of teaching, the work of no takings. And we need to be honest.