AASU On 2014 World Teachers' Day, October 5
All over the world a range of activities will be organized on October 5- World Teachers' Day- to acclaim the role of teachers in providing quality education at all levels. The Day will be celebrated under the theme: “Invest in the future, invest in teachers.”
According to UNESCO, World Teachers' Day represents a significant token of the awareness, understanding and appreciation displayed for the vital contribution that teachers make to education and development. In fact the teachers mold children and adults of all the ages by instilling in them the necessary knowledge that are used as tools to impact on all the development efforts of their local community and global society. Without teachers, probably, the world would have been groping about for the way forward for its advancement.
Unfortunately the universal primary education (UPE) will remain a distant dream for millions of children living in countries without enough teachers in classrooms in the words of experts. Current discussions of the post-2015 development agenda include a target to bolster the supply and training of teachers as part of efforts to ensure that every child is in school and learning.
According to the latest UNESCO data 3.66 million teachers must be replaced by 2015; a total of 5.24 million teachers will be needed by 2015; 57 million children of primary school age are currently out of school, 54 percent of them are girls; annual teacher gap in Nigeria could be closed by recruiting the equivalent of 1.2% of the population aged 20 years, 0.5% for the United States and 1% for China and more than 27 million teachers will need to be recruited to ensure every child's right to a primary education by 2030.
This Day is aimed at mobilizing support for teachers and to ensure that the needs of future generations will continue to be met by teachers. It is therefore, important, to recognize the crucial role of teachers in society and to accord them all the respect and create the conducive environment to enable them to perform their duties to the best of their abilities. Sadly in Africa, the teachers belong to the bottom of the societal ladder without the necessary consideration and remuneration.
The All Africa Students Union (AASU) believes that certain attitudes, behaviors and actions regarded by the world as matters of utmost gravity are direct results of the lack appropriate education by the majority of their perpetrators i.e. majority of the members of different religious fundamentalist groups that have sprung around the world.
AASU, therefore, calls on the International Community to invest in education rather than spending billions of us dollars in armaments and similar things; African governments to adapt the educational curriculums to the realities of the continent and make education accessible to the majority of their people.
A well trained human resource is a prerequisite for any meaningful development of society. It is, therefore, incumbent on us to support their trainers- the teachers.
Lon live World Teachers' Day!
Awaah Fred
(Secretary General)
akaphari@yahoo.com/+233 (0)243101626