Revitalize teachers’ training courses, says Dr. Mengi

THE Government has been urged to revitalize further teachers’ training courses with a view of meeting the increasing demand for qualified teachers in both primary and secondary school education levels in the country.  The IPP Executive Chairman Dr. Reginald Mengi gave the concern in Dar es Salaam on Friday night during the launching of a book titled, “The bird that sings my name” which has been compiled by a Tanzanian lady called Edna Lyatuu Hogan. He said among the basic factors that leads to students’ mass failures as recently announced in the country is due to the fact that, they were not prepared enough to do well in their final exams a factor he added is mostly exacerbated by teachers who are not well trained. Dr. Mengi is on the view of the fact that, a teacher of any level who is not well trained is unable under whatever circumstances to be in a position to teach students acquire quality education as required, in view of this he has urged the government to review educational training curriculum for better quality. However, he said adding that, for a country to develop it must have skilled people for specific areas of sectoral development in order to manage their economic development projects, contrary to that, such a nation would always be incurring losses in its own resources. He reiterated his call on the education system in the country and noted that, needs to be changed to prepare stakeholders in the market and warned that, if precautions are not taken by now to revert the trend, then the nation shall have no experts in future to run its resources. “If we do not have education, we shall yield nothing out of the recently discovered natural gas because of ignorance as most Tanzanians will never even know how contracts have been entered by their leaders” he said.  In view of this factor, he has urged also to take long time in order to train local experts with good reputation and quality education. In this, he has also noted that students must be prepared much earlier enough in order to build a firm foundation for  Apart from teachers’’ training for quality education, Dr. Mengi also talked of the infrastructure such as teaching materials such as books and remunerations for teachers in the country which he said is extremely poor and does not value the status of teachers in the country compared to other countries in the world, he gave an example of Finland which he said their teachers are highly paid. 

Dr. Reginald Mengi displaying the book after he had launched it.

The launching of the book went alongside with the fundraising work aimed to sponsor some secondary schools in the country with copies of the book and computer machines to be used for educational purposes, whereby Dr. Mengi pledged to buy copies worth Sh. 51 million to be distributed to 30 secondary schools in the country including a school named after his name Reginald Mengi Secondary School located on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam city. Others among the attendants were Jenerali Ulimwengu, a veteran Tanzanian journalist who made his pledge of copies worth Sh. 1.7 million for Julius Kambarage Nyerere Secondary school in Dar esc Salaam. In his speech he reiterated the same call of the education downfall in the country and called upon Tanzanians to develop the habit of reading books and learn other things as a sole means of survival. He gave examples of the people in some countries in the world especially in far East such as Japan, India, Indonesia, Korea and Malaysia whom he said could be seen reading books or newspapers even while are travelling on a congested commuter trains in their countries. Describing reading habits, Ulimwengu noted that to get a wider knowledge people reads extensively in order to understand various concepts but not just to answer questions in the case of some scholars. In view of this, he has thrown a challenge to develop an in-depth mindset in reading for understanding.  Others who made their pledge on the spot is the Director of Baobab Secondary school in Dar es Salaam Ambassador Halfan Swai who bought copies for his school and for the Chakiwata Orphanage Centre school located at Sinza in Dar es Salaam, and the Director of the Amani Orphanage Centre at Mto wa Mbu in Arusha city who bought copies of books worth Sh. 50,000/- only. According to the author, a 130 paged book which is full of collections of poems has a theme that brings positive impact to the life of Tanzanians and the outside world. It has an interesting story of human emotion which is true to human life.