When the head teacher could make or destroy

By Ted Malanda

I recently met a drunk who exhibited what a fellow columnist calls "an exaggerated sense of grievance". But that is till he mumbled that he was a genius after all, except that some crook stole his Form One school admission letter and became a professor in his place.

I immediately launched investigations of the gossip variety which proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that the drunkard had a point. What’s more, villagers even fingered the rogue professor. (Here is where all my learned friends at the university should pause and, with a clinical eye, appraise the professorial goatee of the man or woman sitting next.)

Incredible as it may sound, stealing admission letters was a common occurrence in the old days. Then, the world operated via the post office box. Nobody bothered to steal exams because the defence was too tight. They just pinched the finished goods or withheld crucial information coming in by post.

The local primary school was the village’s mobile phone, radio and newspaper combined. Deaths were communicated by telegram, money dispatched by telegraphic money order and all news, good and bad, sent by mail through the school’s post office box. It would, therefore, be no exaggeration to state that the local primary school headmaster practically held the future of village generations in his hands.

It wasn’t so bad, though, because most of the time, the schoolteacher was a paragon of virtue, a respected village elder to boot. But when he was a mean hearted rascal who went green with envy each time some village boy attempted to raise himself by his bootstraps, the village died.

tattered coat

Such are the headmasters who hid school admission letters for some children in a dark pot till the deadline for reporting to school elapsed. Well, high school headmasters are generally very irritable at the beginning of the year. But they go absolutely bonkers when some peasant in a tattered coat tries to explain why his child is reporting a month late without the obligatory hockey stick.

It could get worse. Sometimes, mean-spirited primary school headmasters simply appeared at the secondary school and, after talking nicely, swapped one’s admission for their own relative’s who flunked the exam.

But it was school dropouts seeking college placement or employment who were virtually at the mercy of the primary school headmaster. You see, the man would, like the Special Branch, pry every letter open. And if you happened to be the son or daughter of someone his clan had a historical feud with, that letter inviting you to college or a job interview would be ‘sat on’ till it gathered cobwebs and expired. Unlike the SMS, letters don’t register when they were received, you know.

In fact, so dreaded was the chap that the Government began to advertise the names of successful university applicants in national newspapers, just in case.

school dropouts

Yet gaining admission to a tertiary institution was no mean task. To get into a primary teachers’ training college or institutions offering diploma courses, it wasn’t enough that you knew someone or that you could bribe. You needed to know someone who knew another person who knew just the right person to bribe.

But these days, school dropouts take a whole year selecting a career. Then they hop from one college to another, saying, "My dad wanted me to do computerz thing but me I don’t feel it. Maybe I will do business administration."

It is understandable. After all, colleges, like witchdoctors, nowadays advertise courses on butchery walls, lampposts and market stalls: "Pay for one, get another free!" they say.