Dear Editor,
I refer to the letter by J Kadaru (SN 22.6.08) captioned ‘There should be a moral education programme in schools.’ It is significant that the contributor’s letter begins with the statement “The education we are acquiring in schools today is basically academic,” and thereafter uses this as a launching pad for his arguments. Significantly, he/she ignores that fact that Moral Education (ME) is already taught in Guyana’s schools.
I lament the fact that much of the analysis on the issue has hitherto taken place at an anecdotal level, and not enough effort has been made to document and assess the benefits/problems with current initiatives aimed at correcting a serious problem in Guyana. Such an initial assessment exists in the report An Initial Assessment of the Stamp It Out Consultation, found online at http://www.scribd.com/doc/2072405/An-Initial-Assessment-of-the-Stamp-It-Out-Consultation. Another such assessment of the benefit and need for corporal punishment in a range of disciplinary measures exists at the online report “The Case For Corporal Punishment In Guyana, found at http://www.scribd.com/doc/255891/THE-CASE-FOR-CORPORAL-PUNISHMENT-IN-GUYANA#.
What should be clear, anecdotally, is that a so-called Education in Human Values (EHV) programme will not work outside of an equally strong programme in Religious Education (RE). It fact, it could easily be inferred from the available evidence that ME has failed the Guyana educational system, and that RE should be reinstated. One excerpt of The Initial Assessment of the Stamp It Out Consultation makes the following point to the church and Minister Priya Manickchand, and illustrates the puzzling refusal of Minister Manickchand to address certain core issues:
“11. The attention of the Minister was drawn by a member of the religious community that he was a head of a home, and, having been exposed to Religious Education (RE), felt a severe disconnect with the debauchery and horror of the numerous tales of incest and molestation. Yet another point was made by a presenter that the horror situation described by the Minister in her presentation could in fact infer that Moral Education (ME) in schools had failed.
“For the Ministry to then offer that ‘many perpetrators know about religious education’ was disingenuous, since if the increase of assaults could be traced to a time after the introduction of Moral Education, then there was a valid case for doing away with it. Another contributor suggested ‘Values Education,’ but this is synonymous with ME.
“An immediate suggestion by the church could be that the reintroduction of RE rather than ME in schools would be an immediate part of proposed reforms, since, as Ms. Texiera pointedly asserted, each of the three great religions’ texts denounce rape with some intensity. We should note that Christianity, in particular, has a clear system of values that begins with ‘Thou shalt not,’ and this is revered as a code of conduct by millions.
“Another immediate suggestion could be that the Ministry of Education provide data to show if there was a correlation between the time of the removal of religious education in schools and the increase in incidents of molestation, etc. Ideally, this study should be done by an independent body. Gross methodological and factual faults in previous studies immediately rule out the ERC.”
It seems very clear that the lofty goals of “mercy, of compassion, of sympathy, of love, etc” outlined in Kadaru’s letter cannot be accomplished or sustained by moral education.
The Minister has not, to my knowledge, responded to any of the concerns outlined above.
Yours faithfully,
Roger Williams
