Just before the close of schools in December an announcement was made to the effect that a ban was being placed on the customary in-school Christmas ‘bash’ euphemistically referred to as a Christmas Party and that a much less rumbustious event, a sort of ‘social,’ as events of that nature are described, where music would be limited to the singing of Christmas Carols and where social intercourse would be confined to the uniformed teenagers exchanging seasonal pleasantries would be held.
Keen, it seemed, to place official imprimatur on the new event, Minister of Education Dr. Nicolette Henry actually attended one such well-publicized event and pictures showing her ‘hanging out’ with the children were published in sections of the media. The decision, we are told, did not go down well, particularly with the ‘seniors.’ More than that it attracted an outburst from a former Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, that appeared to make it seem as though there was something particularly shocking about the Ministry’s decision. That, frankly, was hardly the case. What transpired was that the Ministry, belatedly in our opinion, had sought to make a move to forestall the anticipated ‘spiced up’ versions of Christmas schools’ parties that had, over some years, come to dominate the seasonal landscape. From all appearances the Ministry stuck to its guns and as far as we are aware the period came and went without any particular pushback from the students at whom the decision was aimed. We certainly received no actual reports of any of those uproarious post-event incidents which, these days, tend to be part and parcel of the in-school entertainment ‘circuit,’ be they Christmas parties or those events euphemistically christened ‘school fairs’ which, ‘after dark,’ frequently metamorphose into full-fledged adult entertainment with all of what we usually describe as the ‘trimmings.’
This is an issue well worth dwelling on, at least for a while since the school experience is critical to the shaping of adult values. As it happens, we are, these days, confronted with a host of instances in which that experience provides a less than reliable blueprint for safe and responsible passage into adulthood. In-school violence, drug use, sexual promiscuity and all of its consequences, an erosion of teacher authority and parent/teacher confrontations have become par for the course in our school system. The unpalatable truth is that for many of our children, in-school delinquencies have been ‘dry runs’ for adult excesses, with attending school being treated as simply a matter of going through the motions.
Talks (and we have done several of those) with teachers and heads of schools at all levels about their perspective on the challenges associated with the profession of education delivery, almost always takes roughly the same shape. Many teaching professionals, these days, feel a strong sense of significantly reduced authority. Teaching, they say, has, over time, metamorphosed into a physically and emotionally draining pursuit, ‘hard graft’ if you will, with the rewards being hugely disproportionate to the effort. One of the more worrying concerns that have been expressed to us has to do with the feeling that, over time, what one might call the ‘balance of authority’ that has traditionally informed the teacher/student relationship and which lies at the very heart of the stability of the school system, has shifted alarmingly to the detriment of teacher control and by extension to the detriment of the stability of the school system as a whole. Students, they suggest, apparently through sheer force of will and external influences, have, over time, increased their share of in-school ‘control’ significantly and there is no evidence that we have seen that any really robust effort is being made by the authorities to reverse the situation, though the Ministry may, conceivably, consider last year’s Christmas Party decision as a step in that direction.
As an aside one might add that the quicker the Ministry of Education addresses the question of the compulsoriness of greater genuine parent involvement in Parent/Teacher Associations, the closer it will get to holding parents’ feet to the proverbial fire as far as shared responsibility for ‘raising the child’ is concerned. That is a matter that we have raised in more than one previous editorial.
Late last term, during a frank conversation with this newspaper, the Head of a Georgetown secondary school declared without the slightest equivocation that “children have lost much the respect for teachers that used to obtain previously.” The school Head blames this on “out of school socialization” and says that as a consequence teachers have become “more defensive, less assertive.” Worryingly, the school Head expressed the view that there are “instances” in which, “in a sense,” much of what ought to be teacher control has been ceded to the children.
What we have been experiencing – if the assessment of the school Head is valid – is, as has already been stated, an incremental transfer of ‘power,’ which pushes the system into a state of flux, eroding an environment that is convivial to effective education delivery. There may already be some schools in which that is either the case or close to so being. Another secondary school teacher contends that the existing status quo is a function of the way in which many schools are run, hooked up, she contends, to a sort of auto pilot mechanism where the ship more or less steers itself under a mutually agreed arrangement in which there are predetermined boundaries which neither teachers nor students cross. So that, frequently out of fear of likely student reprisals, (of one sort or another) some teachers are sometimes prepared to turn the proverbial blind eye mostly to what might be regarded as the lesser transgressions of school rules (there are instances in which in-school student bullies are known to enjoy immunity from sanction) and may even find it strategically convenient to cultivate ill-advised and sometimes awkward ‘friendships’ with ‘difficult’ students as a hoped-for attempt to gain some sort of control over them. Such ‘arrangements,’ however, frequently erode the sense of order and unquestioned teacher authority which is necessary for the normal functioning of a school. By nature, schools must be strictly discipline-driven institutions with the Head and teachers firmly and unquestionably in charge. It is either that or they cannot serve the purpose for which they are intended.
Whether our education administrators are fully cognizant of these dynamics of the school system is not a question that this editorial can answer though there have been, up until now, no clear signs of an aggressive pursuit of remedies to the problems that we raise here. There is an urgent and critical need, one feels, for our education policy team to immerse itself in a thoughtful, collective and energetic intellectual ‘retreat,’ that allows for a coming to grips with the what we believe are some of the fundamental problems of an education system that sometimes seems to threaten to slip into a state of dysfunctionality. Frankly, we have arrived at a point where the application of remedial measures cannot be underpinned by ad hoc exercises.
Schools as cauldrons of controversy and conflict have to become things of the past as a critical starting point for serious movement in the direction of education reform. Insofar as the actual process of education reform is concerned there is a need for consummate thinkers who must take a deeply contemplative look at the education system from the standpoint of its conviviality for the maintenance of a meaningful teaching/learning environment and ultimately for the transfer of knowledge. Tinkering with what we perceive to be the frayed edges of the system (which is what we have been doing for decades) simply has to end.
