Is Education Still Possible in Mozambique? With Corrupt Teachers "Selling Out" "Course Diplomas" For Our Students?

Afonso Almeida Brandão"

There was a time when the teacher entered the classroom and silence fell. Not out of fear, but out of recognition. Today, they enter and need to earn it. Authority has become suspect. We confuse it with authoritarianism and, in an attempt to protect freedom, we have weakened the boundaries. The problem is simple: without limits there is no freedom, only noise. Schools in Mozambique have become a mirror of society—and the reflection is not comfortable.

We live in a culture that values ​​opinion over knowledge. "I feel" has come to carry the same weight as "I know." Demands are seen as pressure. Frustration as trauma. Mistakes as system failures. However, the teacher is no longer just a teacher. They are an emotional mediator, conflict manager, inclusion technician, report producer, platform operator, and, if there is time, they teach.

To teach— that almost subversive verb. There are parents who scrutinize every grade as if it were a threat to their child's future. Others delegate completely and expect the school to do what the family failed to structure. Between hypervigilance and absence, authority is diluted. And then the great contemporary dilemma arises: inclusion or demanding? Inclusion is a civilizational achievement. But when inclusion means permanently leveling down, we stop protecting the most vulnerable and start weakening everyone. Any doubt? Adapting cannot be synonymous with indefinite simplification. Differentiating cannot mean abandoning standards. Educating implies demanding. Demanding concentration in a world of permanent distraction. Demanding effort in a culture of immediacy. Demanding responsibility in a society that outsources blame. And perhaps that is precisely what is troubling: demanding has become unpopular. To this is added bureaucracy — the silent enemy. Reports, plans, grids, evidence. The school needs to prove everything it does, except what matters most: that it is forming capable adults. The question is often asked whether the students have changed. Perhaps the more honest question is another: have we changed as adults? We hesitate to set limits. We fear conflict. We prefer consensus to consistency.

Is education still possible? Yes. But not if we want a school without discomfort, without demands, and without authority. Not if we want popular teachers instead of firm teachers. Not if we want results without effort. And Mozambique's schools cannot have irresponsible (and corrupt) teachers who continue to sell diplomas to students to pass to the next grade, in exchange for a hundred Meticais, which happens from North to South of our country. And schools cannot replace families either. They cannot solve all social fractures. They cannot be simultaneously inclusive, therapeutic, bureaucratically perfect, and academically irreproachable without something giving way, starting with AVOIDING the sale of passing diplomas to students who do not deserve them. And when everything gives way, what remains...?

Perhaps the real risk is not the loss of authority for teachers. Perhaps it is the loss of the collective courage to acknowledge that educating implies saying "no." And without "no," there is no structure or "schemes." Without structure and "schemes," there is no growth. And without growth, there is no future. By continuing to SELL Diplomas to our students, we will unquestionably be TRADING KNOWLEDGE for IGNORANCE, and tomorrow we will only have incompetent and unqualified citizens in the job market, unqualified for the professional sectors they applied for, with false academic "curriculums"... in exchange for 300 or 500 Meticais.

How long will it take for the Ministry of Education and Culture in Mozambique, through its Minister, Samaria Filemon Tovela, to "open its eyes" to this degrading and surreal reality that is proliferating in our country—and take drastic measures to ensure that the "corrupt" teachers and perpetrators of this "scheme" are severely punished and permanently removed from teaching? How long...?

2025/12/3