Dear Editor,
The decline of education in Guyana since the 1980s has been a major concern for every educated Guyanese citizen. As our political and economic conditions deteriorated, many of our qualified teachers left the country seeking better jobs with better pay and better incentives. When teachers are poorly paid, the education system cannot attract and keep qualified teachers. The effect of these conditions on student performance is reflected on failures at the primary, secondary and university level.
Education is the foundation of a nation’s development, but there has been a greater decline of education in Guyana as we entered this modern era of technology. The absence of trained qualified teachers created more under-qualified teachers in our schools today with ‘children teaching children.’ Performance at the Grade Six exams as well as CXC and GCE is very disappointing. Failures at the University of Guyana have now become a major concern for the business sector as well as government institutions.
Graduating functional illiterates with GPAs as low as 1.6 has created a monster in this nation. Students that are qualified with 6-8 subjects and even university graduates cannot function properly on a job. Many of them cannot write a report or a proper job application letter, or do basic arithmetic, yet they are given a certificate as qualified academically. I know of many students attending primary school in grades 4,5, and 6 who cannot read or write a proper sentence. Some of them I know of cannot read at all. Just last week at my church I asked two girls in our Sunday School to read a simple scripture verse on our blackboard. To my amazement these girls could not read at all, and they were in Grade 6 attending the Mon Repos Primary School. I still wondered how they reached to Grade 6 and will write the Grade 6 Assessments in April. They will probably to the secondary school completely illiterate. This is a very dismal situation, because there are thousands more like them across this nation.
Our entire education system is now sheer guesswork, and the teaching I see in schools is just a hit and miss method where those who learn, learn, but nothing of any intellectual substance is taught.
The true foundation of education is reading. Today students are seen with ipods, blackberries, and all sorts of technical equipment attached to their ears, but a good book for them is something obsolete. My visits to several libraries have proven this fact, because I haven’t seen a great number of students reading and doing research. Today, television and DVDs as well as vulgar music have taken a toll on our young generation. They have created more and more school dropouts, drug addicts, prostitutes, street vendors, etc. We are just one generation away from complete illiteracy.
The school discipline that was in the Ministry of Education 30 years ago has now been thrown out of the school window. The reluctance to use corporal punishment in our schools has created more disobedient pupils and students. Teachers are unable to deal with indisciplined students, thus the teachers are now afraid of some students and their parents. A child without a proper education and great moral upbringing will be another nuisance in society. Most of the problems we have seen are the direct result of illiteracy and poor parental guidance.
In over fifty per cent of our homes reading and writing has been a problem. A survey among the religious community also found that over 60% of families attending church cannot read or write at a very competent level. Many of our young people today in our society cannot write their own names properly. As a legal marriage officer I discovered that a great many of our young citizens will spell their own names wrongly when they write them, while some will write a ‘call name’ but cannot spell out their real names on their birth certificates. While I am not against technology, I believe it has helped to create more illiterates. Our poor education system has failed since the late LFS Burnham introduced free education from nursery to university. This free system failed because our schools cannot produce textbooks for students writing CXC, thus their parents are pushed to buy thousands of dollars worth of photocopied books from some corrupt store owners.
I am still wondering why this printing press I am reading about in the news cannot print free textbooks for high school and university students. The press could even sell the books at a cheaper rate to students, and our government should jail all those who sell pirated photocopied books.
Where have we failed in our education system? First free education did not push our system to be competitive with those of our Caribbean neighbours.
Our country failed to produce better graduates than Barbados, Trinidad, Jamaica and the wider Caribbean. The Caribbean is a very small space of about 6.5 million people, and our people are very far behind in that small space. In many of our institutions in Guyana non-Guyanese are working for higher salaries because our Guyanese people are under-qualified to do the job, and those who are qualified have to have ‘lines’ to acquire a good job. For us to better equip our people academically we will have to return to the old colonial system of education and go back to basics such as teaching Grammar, Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, Spelling, English, Reading, Dictation, Geography, History, etc. Today, even some well qualified teachers cannot teach proper grammar to a child. Many students told me teachers are not taking time to correct their assignments, so how will that child recognize his/her mistakes?
Many of the subjects that are offered at the high school level are business subjects and not some really tough subjects to improve the students’ intellect and thinking power. The teaching of classical literature from Shakespeare to Homer should be re-introduced to the curriculum, as well as the study of Latin, French, Spanish, Economics, Ethics, Logic, Poetics, Literature & Criticism, History, Astronomy, Biology, Physics, Political Science, Jurisprudence, Religion, Mathematics and the Social Sciences. All of these subjects will give our students a comprehensive understanding.
A nation’s wealth and prosperity is measured in terms of her educated citizens. Rome ruled the world once because of her supreme intellectual aptitude and power. We cannot compete with a modern civilized world without a classical education. What the University of Guyana as well as the Ministry of Education need is a new guide for academic progress in the twenty-first century. We need dedicated teachers who will work for their salary and not collect the government’s money under false pretences. The economic progress of this nation comes from education that is the key to our GDP and prosperity. We also need moral education that will include religious education in our schools and universities to build and improve the character of students. The end of education is good character that is the key to our moral, spiritual, intellectual and economic development.
Yours faithfully,
Rev Gideon Cecil