The folly of glorifying Sciences and paying Arts teachers less money

Maybe I should have begun by correcting myself on the title above: it is not that government is paying Arts teachers less money as such…rather that it is paying Science teachers more. You don’t get it, right? That’s precisely the point!

One of the dumbest policies that have been crafted by Uganda’s current government is calling for children to study Sciences, with the rather strange and ideologically bankrupt reasoning that it is Sciences that will take the country forward, because then they will cause rapid industrialisation, blah, blah. And that Arts subjects are not particularly useful – and stuff like history should be ditched, because the leadership feels it cannot play any role in, say, industrialising the country. And to crown this folly in a manner most contemptible, and causing a most objectionable injustice, government came up with the stratagem of paying Science teachers something like three or four times what their Arts counterparts are paid.

So, head teachers are now being forced to deal with a greatly disturbed posse of Arts teachers who feel marginalised, under-valued and altogether despised. Yet the head teachers, with all that, still have to find a way to motivate these teachers, so they can deliver to students.

Of course, world over, every government tries their best to appear to be thinking and working; they try to show that they really are brilliant and top of their game when it comes to crafting innovative strategies. That’s okay; but sometimes they really look…er…dumb while at it. Just like the policy of teaching primary school children in their native language, rather than English – something done in schools where no government official can dare take their children.
But wait, I digress!

Anyways, I could have even began this article by telling the story of one of my Old Boys of Namilyango College. He is a medical doctor and a very high-ranking army officer. But he is also a very enterprising fellow with a dozen side hustles, all doing very well. And one of the strangest things he told me, years ago, was that he had no one to advise him; else would never have studied medicine.

Nearly every parent dreams of their little one becoming a doctor! This one achieved all that and once he reached at the top, cursed his luck. He felt he should have studied commerce, economics and generally, business!

So, while many Ugandans do envy him, deep inside he is filled with regret – he reached the top, only to discover he had stacked his ladder against the wrong wall.

You’ll find many more people like that, if the ridiculous policy of studying Sciences holds sway. 
And you will have children missing their way, going to study Sciences instead of Arts…and then end up struggling all the way, before failing flat. Then they will spend the rest of their lives believing they are stupid.

The Most High gifts people differently; and a country can only realise its full potential when it lets everyone be exactly what the Lord created them to be. 

Of course, there is an ulterior motive behind this policy. Historians, for example, will always analyse political phenomena with a disturbing intellectual depth, drawing from the lessons of history. But when you have a country that is preoccupied with the pursuit and study of Science, as an authoritarian you are swimming in very safe waters. Scientists will, 9 times out of 10, be easier to rule than artists. And that is in part because they are preoccupied with discovery of how nature works, trying to delve into the secrets of God. They are basically inclined to trying to find out how to move from being passive observers of natural phenomenon, to active manipulators of natural processes, so as to preserve life, for example. 

On the balance of probabilities, therefore, Scientists will gravitate towards making discovery – they will be less inclined towards active inquiry into how government works – or what they deserve as citizens, but they are not being served. That’s why you will have properly trained doctors, from the highest institutions of learning, kneeling down like complete idiots and asking an aging President, who came to power before they were born, to run for a seventh term of office.

Gawaya Tegulle is an advocate of the High Court of Uganda    

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