19/09/2015
Today I deviate from my usual line of posts because of something that is on going and is basically affecting most of us.
THE TEACHERS STRIKE.
If I state that the teacher is the most important person in the formative period of all of us, second only to the parent(s); I guess that most people will agree with me.
A teacher has been given the most vital, delicate and life determining role in the making (or breaking) world leaders, doctors, researchers....the list is endless.
So when the government and leaders are handling the on going strike in such a casual manner, they are doing a great disservice to both the teaching fraternity and students.
If you have made a success of your life, I am sure you will trace it back to some selfless, humble, hard working teacher behind it.
KUDOS TO SUCH TEACHERS.
It is unfortunate I am not going to write about these beautiful human beings today. Rather I will writing about the teachers who let us down.
My daughter was sent home to collect money to ensure she was maintained in school during the on going teachers strike. Never mind she didn't have any fees arrears.
This is how low our teachers have stooped in order to catch this elusive shilling - running private business in public institutions. Going on mercilessly to devour the meek, poor parent, instead of taking their battles to their employer, the TSC.
This is not cool.
In fact, this is taking advantage of a defenceless person, just as Mugo wa Wairimu has been doing.
Instead of demanding of the world; "show me the colour of your money and I will do the job", perhaps you should reverse the game and say; "let me show you the colour of my service so that I may look at the colour of your money if you like my service"
While the government may be at fault in refusing to increase the pay of the teachers, its my believe that the culprit responsible for the teachers woes is the teacher himself.
Teaching is a calling. But teachers find themselves in this profession because that is what their grades afforded them.(sorry teachers- you don't want to hear this but in your hearts you know its true, unless of cause teaching is really your calling)
When a man is engaged in work he loves, it is no hardship for him to do more work than that for which he is paid. If you are doing what you love, you are rewarded two fold. One, you get happiness, which is priceless, two, you get the actual money.
Job performed in a spirit of love is usually greater in quantity and finer in quality than that which is performed solely for money.
Most teachers render the least service they possibly can to 'get by'. You can 'get by' if you render as little service as possible, but that is all you will get; and when retrenchment sets in, you'll be the first to go.
"You can no more render service without receiving compensation than you can withhold the rendering of it without suffering the loss of reward" - cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed - observed the world renown Emerson.
The law of nature is - Do the thing and you shall have the power; but they who do not the thing shall have not the power.
Teachers are suffering under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated, yet it is impossible for a human being to be cheated by anyone but himself.
If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Then put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is withheld, the better for you, for the check will even be fatter!
"We parade before the enlarged shadows of our own vanity and imagine that those shadows are our real selves, while the few knowing souls we meet stand in the background and look at us with pity or scorn" said a famous book writer, Napoleon Hill.
"Not only do we fool ourselves as to the real cause of our failures of the past, but we also try to hang these causes on the door of someone else."
- when you deliver the best service of which you are capable, you are making use of the highest form of education. So when you render more and better service than you are paid for, you, more than any other person are profiting by the effort.
Make it your business to render more service than you are paid for and before you know it, you'll find the world is willingly paying you for more than you are doing, - so says the law of increasing returns.
"The educated man is the man who has learned how to get everything he needs without violating the rights of his fellow man. Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought".
"If you receive no pay except that which comes in your pay envelope, you are underpaid, no matter how much money that envelope contains." Napoleon Hill.
