A Teacher’s Mistake

Teacher Mante is a small town on the Nsawam-Suhum highway. The name is an example of the permanency of one being called 'Teacher' because the person does that job. Whenever one finds her/himself in that role for whatever reason or purpose, as a title, it becomes virtually a proper first name. So by being a pupil teacher for eight months in 1965, I am still called Teacher anytime I set foot in that community. And years after my late sixties and early seventies two-year stint as a science teacher, some still call me 'Science Teacher.'

The matter here, though, is not about naming but the role of a teacher and its expectations. Once a teacher, people expect you to know and impart knowledge at all times. It must be so during and after assuming a position as a teacher. Indeed, in our part of the universe, a teacher is an encyclopaedia who knows everything and must, therefore, teach people to know.

We seem to forget the teacher's primary responsibility is not to pump knowledge into the heads of the taught. Rather, the effective teacher's teaching helps the one being taught to be equipped with the relevant skills for teaching herself or himself.

Either way, though, for those taught by a teacher and the community at large, it is a let-down for a teacher to fail to write what is correct. For, once you teach people, they expect you be right all the time; always use the right words and the right spelling of those words. Teacher must not make mistakes because there is always the danger of the taught taking the teacher's mistake as what is right.

That becomes a challenge should the teacher at any point in time become a journalist, and a writing one for that matter. Journalism is about the truth as told in facts and figures with precision. That includes choosing the right words within a given context. It would also include knowing journalese or the language of journalism.

Over the previous two weeks, this column's write-ups have had two reactions. First was a screenshot of the two previous weeks' on WhatsApp by a former student who, I assume, had just discovered it. That of last week, though, attracted a reaction with deeper consequences.

It came from a famous retired editor who still writes a column. The individual whatsapped me: '… the caption [of this column] was… Did you mean 'headline' – as 'caption' is for photos/illustrations?'' If I didn't know the person, I would have said it was a jab. On the contrary, this was a writing specialist who, on many occasions, had edited my works. So I just took it as a normal assistance.

Surely, writing rightly to communicate meaningfully, is to find the right words to express a right meaning.

In another sense, however, one would say the slip was worse than suing against mistake in mistakes. If you are perceived as 'big,' such as a communication professor communicating in writing, no matter where and for what purpose, you are not be making mistakes. In our circumstances in which mediocrity is so rife, you would be counted among those who encourage it.

As my compatriots would recall, since December 9, 2020, it has been one big mistake after another by big, big people. On that day, the Electoral Commission Chairperson mistakenly pronounced 'total votes cast' instead of 'total valid votes cast.' The aggrieved, who decided to seek correction, did so communicating in a court writ a mistake of 'respondent one' instead of 'respondent two.'

As compatriots puzzled over one mistake after another in top circles, the mother of all mistakes would surface. It was a mistake by he who would detect all mistakes, especially those committed purposely for personal gain by those disbursing public funds. He had made a mistake about the day, month and year he was born. And then he had corrected it as he should have. To the powers that be though, it was a mistake that could not be corrected.

To ingloriously cap it all, a professor wrote in his column 'caption' for 'headline.' He who should know and had been teaching people to know when to write 'headline' and when to write 'caption,' wrote caption for headline. It was a shaking shame for the professor who should plead 'mea culpa;' although it would not be enough for him to stop writing.

He would have to continue writing, and correctly too, in order to redeem himself, assuming his mistake is redeemable for a ruthless and sanctimonious critic of his kind. He should vouch 'Dum spiro scribo' (While I breathe I write). Latin Master Mr Graham is not around to assess how accurate an expression that 'lingual latina' is. Amanfoɔ classmates might want to check out; though, I think.

By Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh