By Anonymous Teacher
Kampala-Uganda/ Newsday: President Museveni has heightened his negative attitude towards the arts teachers, the recent one being when he attended Uganda’s belated World Teachers’ Day and made some bountiful promises to the science teachers and looking down at the arts colleagues. Teacher’s day is celebrated October 5 annually.
In his speech, he made so many claims trying to paint a blissful picture that science teachers are more important than arts teachers. He actually asserted sciences change nations and change lives. I may or may not agree with him but I respect his opinion. As for arts teachers, he painted a bleak suffocating picture of us. But to let bygones be bygones, as an arts teacher, I was not moved at all.
I asked myself a billion questions; was the government giving me four million in the last two years in order to survive? Have I died? Have I failed to fend for my family? Life moves on normally. An arts teacher has emerged from lockdown stronger than before. Your ministers and apologists diverted funds meant for teachers during covid. Did you see any arts teacher on the streets or at Parliament demonstrating. Even if schools closed for the next 30years, as an arts teacher, you will have saved us the burden of being in class to attend to children who cannot even afford a pencil or rubber. Anyway, leaving that aside, I wondered whether most of the influential philosophers were scientists. I know many politicians are sidechicks of Machiavelli. But was he a science teacher? I wonder whether the Aristotles, Platos and Socrates were scientists too.
If scientists mattered in this country, the Vice President, Prime Minister, Speaker of Parliament, most ministets would be scientists. But many times Your Excellency you have fronted arts people for these most coveted positions and give them enormous budgets wasted on nothing but luxury and pomp. Okay for argument purposes, one of our former Vice Presidents Her Excellency Dr. Specioza Kazibwe was a scientist. She was a darling of the people I think. What did she do to the money meant for valley dams? The Minister for Higher Education is a science teacher I guess. When the Ministry was allocated with funds for preparing learners home learning materials, upto now many of our villages are still waiting for the materials. I guess the printing machines broke down.
This song of scientists reverberates every time you meet teachers Your Excellency. Would it not be prudent enough if NCDC scrapped these arts subjects completely from the syllabus and we teach only sciences. By the way, why are we still allowing universities to enroll thousands of innocent Ugandans for arts courses? Something must be wrong with the genius science planners of this country. I know Mr. President you are a scientist because economics is a “science”. Don’t you think it is the right time to reshuffle this cabinet and throw out most of these Ministers who are arts leaning. I am sure they are the reason corruption is still a foothold in this country.
Dear fellow arts teacher, allow me meander a bit. In his teachings, Machiavelli offers the theory of leadership which helps create public order and maintain stability in the society. He also drew the conclusion that people are governed by two motives: love and fear – a successful ruler uses both of them. In other words, the combination of love and fear allows the ruler to influence human beings. Therefore, rulers must be careful that they work in a way so that our fear does not turn into hatred. When you put an arts teacher in such a precarious position, what do you expect his reaction to be? Our leaders need to know who exactly is more ambitious and, as a consequence, is more dangerous for them as rulers.
Actually Socrates presented a less-strict doctrine of leadership and power. He thought that the leader should be smart and wise. He said, “Let him that would move the world first move himself.” To him, a person who wants to be a leader should be more attentive to themselves. People are more likely to reach something when they do not tell anybody about their intentions. Socrates saw the leader with a great will, and therefore does not expect leaders to be rigid like Machiavelli perceived.
Concisely in my observation, the teachings of Machiavelli have a lot in common with the modern leaders. The principles of Machiavelli may be useful in detaining terrorist prisoners. So Machiavelli worshipped totalitarianism and megalomania. Our leaders today believe in using adequate pressure to create stability and order. The deception of the people is also effective for successful management. It is at this point that I ask the most fundamental question. “IS IT TRUE THAT ARTS TEACHERS ARE NOT IMPORTANT AND USEFUL TO SOCIETY? But anyway, I have immense outlandish love for Socrates because he did not respect tyranny. He believed that reasonable people with their own outlooks on life had already suffered from them.
Fellow arts teachers, the battle lines have been drawn. You either fight for your place in this country or our politicians are going to use us a joker to pursue their selfish interests disguisingly destroying our future. For long, our nation has survived on divide and rule. But isolation policies are simply a reincarnation of a retrogressive and barbaric past. Friends, we have woken up to a new era of indigenous colonialism and imprisonment. A state where our own leaders want to make us hostages of what we believe in, of our professions, of our tribes, of our religions, of our economic status, and of our own aspirations.
Nicholas Butler a modern philosopher said; “An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.” Fellow countrymen, whoever is giving our president this kind of lame duck advice is the greatest enemy of this country. It even makes me wonder that most of our politicians who confess that sciences are more important than arts are parading their own children in arts courses. You find them in URA, Ministry of Finance instead of being at Mulago treating our ailing Ugandans. Ladies and gentlemen, it is high time we turned not to our own vomit.
As an arts teacher, I am still proud and better a Ugandan. I will not coy around because someone intended to undermine or insult me, I know my duty. Barrack Obama isn’t a scientist. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and Mahatma Ghandi were not scientists but they changed their countries and the lives of their people. So tomorrow I will walk from Kabale to Kotido or from Mutukula to Arua with my head held high as an arts teacher. I am not a product of four million but a product of great ideas that resonate in me and have influenced a number of young innocent lives that have gone through my hands and more are yet to come.
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