Dear Editor,
Congratulations are in order to all the students who excelled at the last sitting of the CXC exams ‘Sarah Hakh of Guyana CXC’s most outstanding student overall‘ SN, Oct 23). Miss Hakh, who won the award for the most outstanding candidate overall in the region, Tamasha Maraj, Deowattie Narine, Karran Singh, and others have done us proud in Guyana and in the Caribbean. It was only last year that another Guyana scholar, Anuradha Dev, daughter of freedom fighter and brilliant columnist Ravi Dev, also topped the Caribbean at the tender age of 14, earning a full scholarship to study medicine at UWI. She has opted to do CAPE instead.
Their achievements are the topic of conversation among New York Guyanese, especially educators (many of us teach in the NY school system).
The successes of the above students show that hard work and being studious pay handsome dividends. They now hog the limelight with all attention focused on their brilliant achievements not only in Guyana but around the region and in New York. I was in Barbados over the weekend and people talked about how Guyana has topped the region two years in a row in CXC. And in Queens, the conversations (before Hurricane Sandy) were on the high passes of these students. They also remember Mr Dev’s daughter. Those of us who are educators in NY talk of their discipline in relation to studying that needs to be emulated by our students in America.
As Trini educators often tell their students, beating the books and burning the midnight oil is far more rewarding than beating tassa and pan and switching off the lamp in the early evening or visiting the cinemas or night clubs. Youngsters need to be encouraged to study hard to earn high passes at exams so they can make their parents and the society proud. Educators, parents and society at large (Ministry of Education) need to pursue measures to get all students to focus more on their studies so they can replicate the achievements of those cited above.
Yours faithfully,
Vishnu Bisram
