Improper Association

When I was in teachers’ college; a three year course, we would spend one year in college, one year out – doing what was known as ‘teaching’ practice and one year back in college. We were supposed to be under the mentorship of an experienced teacher in our respective schools. But because of the lazy nature of most teachers or in some cases, the acute shortage of teachers, we ended up teaching full-time without supervision. That was a recipe for disaster. Or the swim or sink scenario that separated the boys from the men.

I never wanted to become a teacher; maybe that’s why I am not one now even though I was a damn good one and I am qualified to do so. Well, that’s another story.

                When we came back from teaching practice, one of the guys we went to church with now had a wife. She was fourteen. People might have been understating her age when they told the story, but the bottom line was she was young: He had impregnated a schoolgirl and to cover his tracks he had married her: A major escape for him because he could have been thrown out of the teaching profession and on top of that he could have gone to jail for statutory rape.  Another chap had been thrown out the course altogether: He had helped a schoolgirl cheat in exams, schoolgirls had fought over him – his story was a soap opera.

                We had been warned before we went out to the schools of what is known as improper association: A sexual or romantic relationship between a male teacher and a schoolgirl. This kind of relationship was punishable by dismissal from the teaching profession. This rule also applies to a sexual relationship between a female teacher and schoolboy. Even though that happens once in a while, that’s not really a problem and not worth wasting our energies on.

                The two cases I highlighted above, which were really a few of the many cases got people asking ‘what can you expect if you unleash nineteen year old male teachers on pubescent girls?’ Someone went as far as saying teachers should only be ‘mature’ people i.e. above thirty five. When I had spend a few years in the teaching profession, I realised that it’s the older guys who actually abuse schoolgirls and anyway in the case when the relationship was between a schoolgirl and a young male teacher, he would have proposed love in a ‘normal’ way and the girl was in a position to say no and the relationship was common knowledge and society mostly approved. Older guys, however used intimidation and threats and the girl never had the benefit of a ‘real relationship’. All the girl got was hurried sex in some storeroom and the pain of watching the guy move on to another girl. Although I realised that when it came to what we can truly term abuse, it was the older guys who were guilty, there was this one particular youthful teacher who behaved rather childishly: He was friends with a lot of schoolboys and he would provide his room to the boys to have sex in. The school head pretended not to see, just as she was blind to all the sexual abuse cases.

                I also realised that the improper association rule was rarely implemented and in most cases the school head was aware of the abuse of school girls by male teachers and I knew of a case were one forty year old teacher abused at least one school girl every year and no disciplinary action was ever instituted. I also realised that in the rare cases that a male teacher was dismissed from the teaching profession for improper association, no criminal charges were ever preferred even though in most cases the girl was usually underage.

                Cases of sexual  abuse of school girls is just one of the few things that are very wrong within our education system, the same one we claim is the best in Africa. I wonder a lot how safe our children are in the school we send them to. Do we care enough to actually get the step by step detail of what goes in our children’s schools? I wonder.