Dear Editor,
There are loud cries in the land over that recent nursing examination result. It is understandable. But I now submit that the pronounced and dismaying situation cannot be limited to nursing alone.
Using the public statement of the Public Health Ministry on the matter as context and basis, I table the following free-ranging thoughts and concerns. Today, nursing is in the glare of the spotlight, but I would be bold enough to assert that it cannot be the only profession that should be so stressed and distressed over its intake of newcomers. After all, the batches of recruits for other disciplines originate from the same preparatory feeder system.
It should be helpful to recall those damning findings from the ministry itself, as they pinpointed deficiencies in conceptualization, interpretation, explanation at demanding levels, and the dependency on memorization.
Even the outstanding students who make the headlines are mainly confined (and confine themselves) to the closet of memorization. How can there be room for conceptualization, imagination, and contentions when a score of subjects is prized? I learned that one student who fell into that category attended lessons for every subject that was read. This is not thinking, but mass production.
So, while there is a well-stocked memory bank of sometimes questionable content, the balance sheet of real learning, and of life itself, is overweighed with systemic and self-inflicted liabilities. Nursing is the public casualty and current whipping post. It reels today.
Now I wonder ‒ and the concerned in this society should ask ‒ if the same is not true of medicine, law, air traffic control, media practice, and the public service, too. It could be that many of the incumbents in these vaunted arenas might not withstand a hard, thorough, and qualitative probe. I climb farther up the ladder of inquiry and I point to ministers then and now, and whisper: did they not emerge, with few exceptions, out of the same system that contributed to the nursing examination debacle?
I move from the qualitative and peer into the hazy world of principles. I struggle to locate the ethics and morals in high level leadership. Yes, the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount can be memorized and quoted and displayed.
But is the system, inclusive of content and contributors, impressing upon the need for introspection and implementation?
Editor, what has been exhibited in abundance is the devotion to the mechanical, and objection to the cerebral. The nursing examination furnished a complete case study of all that is wrong with what is taught, how it is received, what brings comfort, and by whom such is lauded. The problem is that the reach goes beyond nursing, and that it is not for the benefit of growth or confidence in this country. Something has to give; some new mentalities given primacy; and some new approaches essayed.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
