Most mortals are particularly atrabilious and attired in attitudes that are not only detestable to ethics, but also inimical to collective progress. My worst encounter with attitudinal eccentricities was recorded in the teaching industry as a teacher of Literature in English and English Language since 1999 {This is June, 2005}.

Teaching is fun-filled for me; and despite the little remunerations and ample humiliation it brings through the disparaging perceptions of teaching by people and the Nigerian society, I consider myself lucky to belong to a team of angels who decide the cutely qualitative fierceness and fitness of fixed facts and dynamic derigueurs that shape heroes' tomorrow.

Like professor Okey Ndibe, my best teacher, smiling at and tolerating learners' blunders as well as commending their perspicuous potentials, without loaning indiscipline a tacit support, I stand before several students to quixotically dish out knowledge no examination obstructions from the lineages of Literature and Language, or life agony or cacophony can conquer.

Mimicking the moral muscles of Mahatma Ghandi, Tai solarin and Socrates as well as the oratory prowess of William Shakespeare, Wole Soyinka, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Spencer Churchill and fore African oracles, I inspire my students with the fundamentals of fairness, reason and collectivism.

I make my protégés love, wish to live because and die for the survival and happiness of every mortal as man's only redemptive planetary goal. These I have done in the active presence of more than fifty thousand students over the years, and shall be fulfilled to continue, if not increase, as long as I live. They too hail and applaud my Labrador roles, a reciprocatory elevation to a humanist and scholar demoted by egregious societal disorientations, I must confess!

Physically and economically taller and fatter humans bend and crawl in banal but befitting obeisance to Mankind and I am humbled and more motivated to wish to stay in the classroom forever. It is more than great in my view, and I feel fulfilled all the time, even though another calling owns my academic nostalgia. Even though my purpose goes beyond teaching knowledge and inculcating ideals and morals, I am very proud of myself and the job.

The gloom of the euphoria however harasses my confidence and belittles my pride. I am aghast by the determination of some students to maintain the status quo of their soaring ignorance. I am stupefied by the zeal with which academic apprentices insult and assault physically and ideologically less prominent tutors.

It astounds my all where learners buy or borrow the spunk they lavish in humiliating honorable men and venerable women, who, despite the poverty and fat social hopelessness they get {still get!} as rewards for lovingly agreeing to positively restructure their future, have unswervingly dedicated to their mental development.

Specifically, I once suffered an inexplicable disrespect, a sort of sacrilegious insult accompanied by assiduous assault from one of those my cells and tissues sweated to put right. I was flurried and horrified not only by the bellicose homage of this capricious student, but also by the divinely incertitudinal dictates that warranted such.

That day, I invited him to leave the class after ceaselessly warning him against consistent noise production amidst lectures, and with reluctant face questioning my authority, he snailed out of the classroom.

After that class, my strong but unscrupulous student had already stationed himself outside in readiness for a duel with me as Leartes for noble Hamlet. Deceived by his bulged chest and weight lifters' stature, he wanted to pull my honor down by beating me up! I adopted every policy reason could suggest to quench the duel, but he was bent on fueling it.

Before long, he had presented me a deadly punch, which I barely escaped by paring. Within just two minuscule minutes, the induced peril and fury of my martial punches and kicks thought him a bloody lesson. Jesus did not have a gigantic physique, but he performed tasks millions of Colossuses would have fumbled at performing. I do not boast any physical fierceness-for I truly possess none, but my tiny strength assisted my safety that day!

A Colleague was waylaid by a gang of derisory idiots whose mission was to beat him up. My friend, the only son of an African metaphysics specialist, punched his assailants with a ring rinsed in an unsparing African consociation of epilepsy, and those sent to school to learn won themselves a unique status in temporary epilepsy. Students, be very careful!

Let us assume my friend and I were defenseless in those instances, it is diametrically wrong for any student to have nursed the ambition of fighting, let alone reducing his teacher to ashes by removing vigor from his life.

The day I was attacked, I left my visiting mother alone in the house for the class; the day Ayo was assailed, he trekked for one hour to get to his students, because he was impecunious. Was beating us up in our different situations commensurate with the investments we made to help our wonderful students?

As they teach, teachers must not ignore the discipline aspect of their noble avocation. They must impact knowledge alongside with etiquette as well as prepare themselves to sacrificially curb every breed of immoral insurgency without using their privilege and office to exploit or oppress their students.

Teachers who do not regard the upholding of moral conducts a proportion of every topic they teach, through any school subject or course are builders of an empire of disaster, students who seek always to make their teachers feel insignificant will never be worthy in whatever they become tomorrow.

walemankind@yahoo.com

© June 2005 by Afromerica