A DISCLAIMER before I proceed: if you are a former teacher or academic in the running for public office or are currently serving as one, please don’t take this week’s piece personally.

I am aiming my crosshairs at the profession (if it is indeed one to begin with), not individuals.

Okay, now let’s get back to the show.

So, yeah, politicians are terrible teachers. I make this assertion as someone who has been in the teaching profession as a university academic for almost 20 years.

I’m not bragging about my seniority in the profession because frankly speaking, this was never my ambition to begin with.

I thought I’d stick around in this line of work for maybe a year or two but every time, some gut feeling made me stay on and with the benefit of hindsight, it’s probably the best decision I’ve made professionally.

I say the best decision because my main intent in life is to pursue my muse, in this case songwriting, recording and performing, on my own terms.

In late 1990s and early 2000s Malaysia, this stubborn desire was pretty much a pipe dream for most until digitalisation and the Internet changed everything.

The two fields which I could have pursued full-time were either journalism or filmmaking – very demanding professions when it comes to time, and I was selfish with my time because realised early on that time is a finite and irreplaceable asset for a mere mortal like myself.

So, I pursued my academic training as a freelancer while keeping my muse alive, until I stumbled upon the opportunity to teach full-time.

While having parents who were both academics might give the impression that it must have been a smooth transition like a duck to water, this was further from the truth.

My dad’s advice was brief and succinct: it was pretty much just “you need a blackboard or a whiteboard” (this was pre-PowerPoint years) and honestly, that’s the best advice one could have received.

For the first couple of years at the private university college I taught at, I never really had any training on how to teach (known in these circles as “pedagogy”). I assumed everyone just winged it.

For whatever reason, I transitioned seamlessly as a lecturer – maybe my experience as a performer helped because I always saw teaching as a form of performance above everything else.

I also came to realise that just because someone is from The Industry (sarcastic capitalisation mine), it doesn’t make them the best teacher, let alone mentor.

So how does this figure in my assertion that politicians are terrible teachers?

A politician’s duty is to convince others a.k.a. voters that they are the best person for the job and that they are representative of them and their values.

This exercise may include very public displays of goodwill such as meet-and-greet sessions along with photo ops with the community and whatnot but like icebergs, these are just the tips of what it takes to garner a shot at public office.

It’s hard, but not impossible, to be an independent politician but without the machinery of a political party membership to mobilise a campaign, one will need either an angel funder or massive personal wealth to soldier on.

And with political parties, since we’re dealing with human beings here, comes the internal politics of being in an organisation or group with its own culture and pecking order.

And we haven’t even gotten to the public image grooming, campaigning, schmoozing, patronising, backdoor deals, etc. that will come along. In other words, to be a politician is the race to be popular – at whatever cost.

Even just a rudimentary surface-level look at what it takes to be a politician distances itself from a noble yet under-appreciated (at least income-wise) profession such as teaching.

Being an effective teacher takes time and most importantly a strong desire to learn.

Being a teacher doesn’t mean being a know-it-all. Being a teacher means being a humble servant of knowledge. You hold the torch, but you are not the torch.

Politics requires a politician to be that proverbial torch, which is an impossible feat since politicians are just human like the rest. Plus, being a politician, at least nowadays, also requires one to have bulletproof ego.

This is important because just like a CEO is beholden to his or her stakeholders, so are politicians to their funders and electorate – who might be conflicting or differing in their motivations and intent.

A politician, aside from being an elective representative, is also a negotiator – between stakeholders, the electorate, and most importantly, their own internal moral and ethical selves.

Therefore, politicians are terrible teachers because they do not carry out lessons – THEY are the lessons that we the public learn from. – November 4, 2022.

* Azmyl Yunor is a touring underground recording artiste, and an academic in media and cultural studies. He has published articles on pop culture, subcultures and Malaysian cultural politics. He adheres to the three-chords-and-the-truth school of songwriting, and Woody Guthrie’s maxim “All you can write is what you see”. He is @azmyl on Twitter.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.