IN TODAY’S VIEWPOINT, PENSIONERS FM LOOKS AT CURBING UNPROFESSIONAL TEACHING PRACTICES IN NIGERIAN SCHOOLS
Early this month, a viral video of a female teacher landing heavy slaps on a three-year old boy, for inability to write number six, sent shock waves around the country.
Uproars trailed the horrific incident.
Principally, the teacher’s action was unprofessional, worst of all, the victim of the appalling assault was a minor.
However, the action of the female primary school teacher has ignited conversations and brought to the fore the need to thoroughly address unprofessional practices of many teachers in Nigerian schools, especially privately owned ones.
In January, 2024, a pupil in a Lagos school died as a result of severe flogging by a teacher.
Similarly, in May last year, the police in Anambra State arrested a teacher for allegedly beating an eight year old pupil into coma.
Previous years have seen no exception to the anomaly.
In February 2022, a teacher allegedly beat a nineteen months old pupil to death.
His grouse was that the child was playing with water.
Also, same year, a family was left in anguish and grieve in Lagos when their son, a junior secondary school two student fell ill and died on May 16, after he was allegedly caned by a teacher for not completing his mathematics assignment.
These are just few out of a litany of cases over the years, and should stir up the question ‘what is going on in our schools?
Obviously, there are rules guiding classroom practices and discipline in education.
In Nigeria, corporal punishment in school is a controversial topic despite its ban under the nation’s child’s right act of 2003.
Slapping pupils or students, as in the case of the teacher in the viral video, amounted to assault, a criminal act and a violation of the child’s right act.
However, there is the need to examine probable underlying causes of these relent assault on pupils and students in Nigerian schools.
Teaching is a profession, and those engaged in the field are equipped with requisite acumen for classroom practices and interaction.
However, it is common to find in classrooms, entities without academic qualifications in education, a consequence of the nation’s growing unemployment rate.
Also, emotional intelligence is a crucial factor in social interaction, where this is absent, tensions, aberrant behaviour, and outbursts surface.
Quite a number of displaying negative social behaviour such as anger are simply transfer of aggression, frustration or other psychological factors.
The school and classroom setting are social spaces, where failure to manage emotions in the course of interaction could engender misdemeanor and crisis.
These are inexcusable in school, especially in teacher-pupils interaction, as it ultimately affects the classroom climate, and could impede learning.
In view of the recurring of unprofessional conduct by a number of teachers in schools, it is incumbent on school-heads, proprietors to thoroughly monitor classroom activities of teachers.
Any teacher found flouting rules of engagement with pupils or students should been summarily summoned and sanctioned.
Ministries of education across the country should intensify their oversight of activities in schools through regular visits by inspectors at local, zonal and state levels.
