Introduction
Most teachers in Africa deal with classroom management coupled with discipline. This is intense when the class size exceeds its maximum limit. UNESCO prescribes a maximum of 60 students per extra-large class. Most teachers run classrooms of over 60 students. This is a result of several government policies that favour inclusion and give opportunities to more families that cannot afford to pay for private education.
Questions to teachers on what their classroom looks like, and if it is a place where they feel safe, answers are generally caricatures and negative. Most teachers describe their classroom as hell in school, a place they want to run away from, a community of learners that creates more fear, and more tears than smiles. As a response to this situation, teachers shout, scold, punish and dismiss ill-behaved students from their class. The teacher-student relationship appears more vertical than horizontal, where the teacher remains the master and the student the follower. When asked how they deal with their own children and whether it is a different situation at home, most opinions reveal that the situation is quite similar.
How to overcome these challenges?
To get through these challenges, teachers should use a rights-based approach to their teaching. They should understand that Human Rights is not an abstract and far-fetched concept both at home and in the classroom. It is often said that education begins at home. So, home is the place where children learn and acquire the first fundamental values: greeting members of the household and visitors in the morning, saying ‘please’ when asking for a favour; saying ‘thank you’ or expressing gratitude for anything good given or done to them. Schools being therefore the continuation of homes, teachers are expected to bring in more interest by introducing life skills to the content of their teaching. This entails getting to know one another, accepting differences and diversity of opinions, avoiding prejudice and discrimination…
As parents and teachers, they should know that a classroom, like a home, is a community in which both the teacher and the learners are all members. If the teacher does not feel like a member of that teaching and learning community, it will be difficult for him/her to be accepted by the other members of the community who are the students of her class. This may bring tension in the teacher-student relationship. This will make learning difficult to effectively take place, as the teacher needs to be accepted first as a human being and second as their teacher, then as their educator, their unavoidable partner and mentor.
For that learning community to move on smoothly, discipline should be a must. Its members should get to know one another and set up rules that will ease the organization and the running of the community. It is, therefore, the responsibility of the teacher to instill respect among its members, build up self-confidence, raise self-awareness, use and enhance everyone’s talents and capacities and encourage everyone’s participation. There is a necessity, as a prerequisite, for the teacher’s own capacities to be enforced so as to be able to achieve the following:
- Building up a sense of togetherness and responsibilities;
- Teaching of self-respect and respect for others;
- Exercising rights, obligations, democracy, fairness and non-discrimination;
- Promoting Gender equality and participation.
- Applying fair punishment, avoiding marginalization, and thus protecting and preserving each one’s rights and dignity.
Conclusion
It is important to draw teachers’ attention to personal attitudes that may lead to unjust and unfair treatment when they are not aware of respecting human rights. They should be trained in using rights-based approaches that will change the way they handle children that are full human beings.
