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Despite the huge number of unemployed youth in the nation’s labour market, few are willing to go into the teaching profession.

At an interactive
meeting with youth last week, the Lagos State Governor, Babatunde
Fashola, decried the development, and encouraged young graduates to
embrace teaching, adding that lots of opportunities abound in the
profession and they would make better teachers. “How many of you
graduates want to teach? Nothing would please me more than to have a
degree holder in Mathematics do a training program in teaching methods
and teaching our secondary school students Mathematics,” he said.
Similarly, Chris Ogbechie, the Director of Etisalat CSR Centre, Lagos
Business School, while decrying the poor standard of education in the
country, at an event some weeks ago, noted that the teaching profession
has become unpleasant to many, especially the well qualified ones.
“Many of our brilliant youngsters don’t want to go into teaching,” he
said. “In the 60s and 70s, the best brains in each faculty ended up
staying on as teachers. But that is not the same today.”

Their reasons

For Dennis Ciroma,
he is completely appalled by the idea of becoming a teacher because he
believes the profession is not well respected despite the intellectual
abilities of teachers. “I don’t want to be a teacher,” he said. “I can
never be a teacher even if it’s the last job. There is no respect in
the profession and they are not well paid. Despite the fact that
teachers are learned and brilliant people, it is not translated to the
monetary wealth and respect they earn, especially in this country.”

Another youth,
Helen Akamnonu, echoes Mr Ciroma’s views about poor remuneration.
Having worked briefly as a teacher, during her national youth service,
she says that despite the governor’s encouragement, she wouldn’t like
to be a teacher because young people are attracted to professions that
give them lots of money which doesn’t include teaching. “Even though I
did my youth service as a teacher, I don’t think I would like to
continue being a teacher,” she said. “I enjoyed it while it lasted but
even the students I taught did not have much regard for we that taught
them. Most of the students I taught want to be politicians so they can
earn much money, and I am talking about students in Junior Secondary
School. They have looked around and observed that politicians are
richer than teachers and therefore won’t like to be teachers.”

Providing encouragement

However, teaching
can be a comfortable profession when one finds himself in the right
place, says Sola Lewis, an English teacher at Topmost Private Schools.
“I never wanted to be a teacher initially,” he said. “I tried to get
into the university several times to no avail. I found myself in a
college of education studying English Education and even then, I
continued trying to get into the university. But when I finished, I got
a job in a private school and the pay was alright. Then I got promoted
before coming to Topmost School and I am very comfortable where I am.”

Stanley Ukwah, a former teacher with over 10 years teaching
experience, gives a perspective to people’s dislike for the teaching
profession. “The reason why young people don’t want to be teachers
again is very obvious,” she said. “There is no prestige attached to the
profession and it is the fault of our leaders. When they don’t pay
proper attention to the people who are responsible for moulding the
future of people, their respect would obviously be down played. They
rather pay more attention to banking and engineering jobs rather than
the people who taught these bankers and engineers.”