Dear Editor,
A parent shared this story. Upon inquiry during a chance encounter on the street with the Form Teacher as to the performance of her child, the parent was informed that her first form child was not doing well in English and Maths. Lessons were recommended and an invitation was extended to chat more about follow-up arrangements.
Editor, you heard and read right the first time: This involved a Form 1 student, and already the automatic remedy is lessons.
What is happening during regular school hours in public schools? What level of care and interest and persistence prevails in the classroom? That is, teachers’ care and interest and persistence? I know from past personal experience of demand manufactured and foisted upon a frightened and captive student population, and their equally terrified and resigned parents. Poor, struggling, bewildered parents.
This is an abomination, and particularly so when the Education Minister and her entourage of public servants preen and prance with the relative handful of overachievers and star performers.
They forget conveniently to acknowledge the crucially pivotal contributions of private lessons to many of those individual results, and to ignore what occurs during the regular day. Next, the newsworthy schools are buoyed by a long moment in the sun in the first instance; but it is those ubiquitous private and costly lessons edifices that power the numbers in many, many instances.
Even more pointedly, the lessons manipulators broadcast publicly of “100% pass rates” in this and that discipline, but these manipulators just as artfully neglect to mention that they had weeded out the slow, the poor, and the marginal (all undesirable) who would impact negatively on that coveted marketing selling point of “100% pass rates.”
Thus, when one considers the secondary educational landscape in its entirety, it becomes clear – abundantly clear – that there are the disingenuous propagandists in official robes on one side, and the crafty practitioners in the classroom on the next, and both jostling for precious space as to who is doing more for the children.
The facts and circumstances indicate that children and parents are preyed upon in a remorseless squeeze, which is all about cheap dollars, and little of academics and academic ethics.
I recognize that there are slower and weaker students, and honourable and performing teachers. The latter, I believe, is in the minority.
It is why today’s thrust and emphasis is on the dishonourable that target the slow and hunt for blood and a recurring pound of flesh. And when the weak among the innocents are not naturally available, then they are created to stuff the probing, grasping, sucking vacuum of greed that first poisons the children, and then cripples them.
I do hope that those in charge will cease and desist from the photo ops, the soundbites, the self-congratulations, and the pageantry to face the stark harsh realities that hurt and blight the present and future. They just might be tempted to do something that is meaningful and relevant.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
