Abstract
Teaching used to be a well-respected profession, which many people used to love in the past.Many children, when asked what they wanted to be when growing up, indicated that theywanted to be teachers. This is why – even when children were play-acting – most of them likedto play the role of a teacher. It is disturbing to learn that this profession has grown to be hated bymany people today. This is evidenced by the mass resignations of teachers from many publicschools over the past few years in South Africa. This exodus had been researched by differentscholars from different disciplines who have also made their recommendations as to how thesituation can be reversed. The fact that teachers, who are disappointed and demotivated tocontinue with the career, are the creation of God and are teaching the creation of God, calls forthe church through its pastoral theological services to play its role in trying to compose guidelinesfor the elimination of the problem. The purpose of this article is to search for possible ways inwhich the church can theologically play its role in addressing the problem of the teachers’dissatisfaction as well as giving some guidelines on how this challenge can be eliminated.
Highlights
The resignation of teachers, black teachers from government schools, has reached an alarming rate in South Africa. Wide reporting of this phenomenon in the media has brought a great deal of uncertainty to parents of scholars as well as to the National Department of Basic Education
Research into the possible causes has been undertaken from the viewpoints of a number of different disciplines
The South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU), quoted by eNCA (2015), confirms the unfolding disaster being caused by the high numbers of teachers resigning in these words: The situation is dire because what is happening is that in 2014 we have lost about 14 000 teachers
Summary
The resignation of teachers, black teachers from government schools, has reached an alarming rate in South Africa. Wide reporting of this phenomenon in the media has brought a great deal of uncertainty to parents of scholars as well as to the National Department of Basic Education. The South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU), quoted by eNCA (2015), confirms the unfolding disaster being caused by the high numbers of teachers resigning in these words: The situation is dire because what is happening is that in 2014 we have lost about 14 000 teachers. At the beginning of 2015 we are seeing again many of our teachers resigning. In some of the schools that we have visited at the beginning of the year the principals were complaining that they have lost about 17 in one school and 14 in another school
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