Ghana public sector holds close to 700,000 workers and out of these, some 300,000 are teachers teaching in the various level of education. The teacher is the only public sector worker whose work deals with building human resource capacity for the nation. Nonetheless, the profession is also the most vilified considering the kind of treatment a teacher receives as a professional facilitator.
Not long ago, the President of the republic affirmed the long-held public perception about teachers that they are poor. The president was bold to confess what many leaders could subtly avoid and said teachers are not designed to be millionaires and that they require an additional avenue to reach the top.
Many teachers think that entering the teaching profession is merely a service to mankind. Some teachers even claim that they teach because they have the passion or love for the children not because of money. Others have accepted a long-held philosophy that teachers’ reward is in heaven. Despite these sayings appear to be inconsistent with professional jobs, mysteriously, the Ghanaian teacher has come to embrace the notion that they are doing a job for the service of the nation but not to earn a complete living or make a higher living standard.
Coupled with poor conditions of service, lack of proper and effective promotion, incentives, and motivation, the teacher is only seen as a person who only works to feed himself (Hand to Mouth). There’s little room for the teacher to save enough for himself and even invest and aspire for a higher life. The teacher depends on loans upon loans for survival and cannot even boast of personal savings of $3000 in a pace of 10yrs teaching continuously.
It’s very clear that a teacher has been abandoned by riches and it only appears to him as a perspective instead of reality. There’s little or no room for even career advancement so long as he is tied up to the classroom. It is sad that such a noble profession had little prospects and cannot catapult any person to the realms of self-actualization and higher living standards. As for the teachers’ salary, the least said about it the better. It is unfortunate though but I will advise any teacher reading this to begin to have a second thought about this teaching profession. If you want to make it big in life and to be counted worthy of riches, then being a teacher is like retrogressing yourself in life. Think twice and learn a lesson from the wisdom of the president ‘a teacher is not designed to be a millionaire’
