Dear Editor,
This month has been designated Education Month and the theme is ‘Educating the child − a parent/teacher responsibility.’ Sounds beautiful but does it apply? And what about the responsibility of the ministry and the Minister of Education? It applied when I was a student in both primary and high school − those were the days.
Those were the days when teachers took pride in teaching − when a teacher who was teaching a Common Entrance class would spend a lot of time with his/her students because that teacher wanted a lot of ‘passes.’ Those were the days when PTA meetings were frequent and there were interactions between teachers and parents that were always very fruitful. Those were the days when there were schemes of work and notes of lessons which were checked weekly and daily respectively, and visits by education officers were frequent and almost feared by teachers. What do we have in our schools today?
We have primary school students who go to school with book bags that could easily give an adult hernia. Some of these students, whose parents can afford it go to lessons from as early as 6am until 8am and then they go to school and when that is over the same students go to lessons again from 4pm to 6 or 7 pm. One wonders why all these extra lessons are necessary. It is because teachers say (and perhaps it is true) that they can’t finish the syllabuses within the regular school day.
The Minister has declared that school buildings should not be used for the purpose of giving extra lessons (unless they are free). If the syllabuses can’t be completed within the school day then something is wrong somewhere. Have we looked to see what is wrong? By preventing teachers from using school buildings it means that children have to move from the school to another location for the needed extra lessons (especially for the Grade Six Assessment), and that means an additional cost to get to that other location.
I would like to ask the Minister to pay a visit to the East Canje district and watch the children as they try to get an education. Look to see how parents struggle to provide for them and then think of what the ministry officials could do to show ‘responsibility.’
While I am on the school system let me take a quick look at the relatively new phenomenon of first-year children taking their own desk/seat to school. Let us say that 60 new students enter the school and they take their seats to school. At the same time 60 will leave after CXC and they do not take their seats with them. This process is repeated every year. Should we now not look to build a storeroom for all this extra furniture that the schools should have? No. We still need to burden parents with finding an additional 6 or 7 thousand dollars to buy new ‘seats.’
Still our students can’t even prepare a proper CV or present themselves on paper in proper English (not all but very many of them). It is a reflection of a lack of proper management from the top to the bottom. If there were proper supervision almost all of the defects could be remedied. As a matter of fact with proper management this whole country would be a better place to live in.
Yours faithfully,
Charrandass Persaud
