Dear Editor,
I write to express my concern that those students who are automatically promoted are being shortchanged by our education system through the implementation of the ‘No Repetition’ policy. Editor, this policy will not aid the intellectual development or learning capacity of any child, but will instead allow schools, through the Ministry of Education, to harbour illiterate and delinquent Guyanese who will never survive academically in the real world and who, upon exiting the school system (one way or other), will in no way be prepared to meaningfully contribute to society academically. The ministry’s policy, I fear, will fail an entire generation of children if it is not immediately discontinued.
Editor, it is not even that these students will not be able to cope with a higher level of material which would be more academically complicated and challenging, or that wrongfully promoting undeserving students will stifle the potential of these students to realize that they too can study hard, focus and get good grades. It is the strain and added work brought on teachers who will have to sacrifice immensely to render extra assistance and time to these ‘automatically promoted’ children to teach them the work of both the previous and present classes.
It is also shameful that the Ministry of Education did not consider other children who would have studied and passed, believing that working hard is the way to achieving your goals, to be slapped in the face with this automatic promotion policy which says that hard work and dedication to work means nothing. Discouraged is what they will be, since it will be their much needed class time that will be blindly stolen from them when teachers have to place special emphasis on the ‘automatically promoted.’ If this isn’t the case, then it will be a case in which promoting these students serves no purpose, as some teachers will lose patience and simply give up on them.
What exactly are we teaching our children? That it is wrong to diligently pursue and work hard to achieve your goals? Or, that while it may not necessarily be wrong to work for what you want, there is really no sense in doing so, since you can acquire them through other means? Forgive me Editor, but this a thief’s mentality! And that is very alarming for the future of this country.
One way or other, there is a stench to this policy that cannot be ignored. If this error in judgment on the part of the Ministry of Education is not corrected immediately, our children and our children’s children will pay the ultimate price. As Cuba is known for its doctors, Guyana will be a nation of illiterates.
Yours faithfully,
Sharon Persaud
