Dear Editor,
Lurlene Nestor in a very thought-provoking letter in KN chronicled a list of eight serious crimes (including one suicide) perpetrated by Guyanese youth during the first five weeks of 2014. Editorial constraints do not permit a discussion of all the questions posed. As a result I have chosen the question, which in my opinion, is most relevant to the main issue raised in Ms Nestor’s letter: “Is the school curriculum appealing to students to the extent that it is meeting students where they are on the learning spectrum and interested?”
A precise answer to the above question is not possible now due to the fact that I do not have access to the relevant data. However, a general impression could be gained if the question were reworded to ask: ‘Are our schools nurturing places, and how relevant are they in the lives of today’s children?’ A working knowledge of the public school system and current education practice would suffice to give a reasonable answer.
Without fear of contradiction, I would suggest that there has not been any fundamental change in the practice of education from the days of ‘school-ready’ students and mostly male teachers of predominantly middle class backgrounds in factory-like places to the current era of mass education. In the past when educational opportunity was restricted to an academic ‘elite’, the values of the students, teachers, and schools were more or less homogeneous, and as such it was relatively easy for the needs of the student clientele to be met.
In the schools of today, there is a potpourri of value systems and much heterogeneity which makes it extremely difficult to meet the wide variety of needs that exist within the student body. Further, a significant number of today’s students, for one reason or another, are not prepared for the culture shock they encounter in the middle class institution called school, and enter the institution as virtual aliens. Whether they will remain alienated and are eventually pushed out, would depend to a very large extent on the teachers they encounter during the early stages of their formal school career.
Most of the trained teachers in our schools are ‘trained’ to teach subjects – English, Mathematics, Social Studies, etcetera, but they are not sufficiently professionalized to educate, to make learning come alive, exciting, fun, or to use the various subject-disciplines to elicit, nurture and develop the latent God-given talents and potentials that lie hidden within their charges.
Preoccupation with student assessments and matriculation rates have taken attention away from important issues such as the relevance and adequacy of curricular, co-curricular and extracurricular offerings, instruction, student-teacher relations, parent-teacher relations, and students at risk. In spite of the overwhelming evidence that a shift of emphasis to human development is urgently needed if we ever hope to arrest the vast haemorrhaging and wastage of young lives, the traditional narrow moribund academic emphasis continues to reign supreme in our schools.
When students embark on a school career, they also embark on a search for identity, an image of self: ‘Who am I? What are my talents, what special gifts do I have?’ When teachers help students to elevate their self-images and to develop a sense of belonging, those teachers are making positive contributions to the development of a good society. The big question is, how often does this happen in our public school system? Judging from the numbers of dropouts, illiterates and misfits, etcetera, I would say not very often.
Experience suggests that an effective way to help unprepared students weather the culture shock of the formal school process is to focus on those students’ assets. This is in stark contrast to our traditional and current practice that focuses on correcting perceived inadequacies – remediation. Decision-makers in our public education system ought to realize that we can no longer use yesterday’s tools to solve today’s problems and expect to be in business tomorrow. Teachers in our public schools need to realize that confidence and self-esteem are more likely to be the outcomes when students discover what they can do well and strive to develop their unique talent and gifts.
When the paramount goal in our public schools becomes the more emancipating, empowering, and enduring human development, rather than narrow and moribund academic achievement as measured by the national Grade Six Assessment and matriculation rates, we would have unleashed a force that offers the greatest potential for the growth of a good society: the self-image of individuals.
Yours faithfully,
Clarence O Perry
