Anyone who has watched the American TV series “Law & Order”, or for that matter any of the staple television or streaming shows and films depicting crime solving would be familiar with the ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine. Usually planned, it is a tactic employed by police officers to persuade suspects into trusting the one who acts the good role and fearing the other who may display some amount of belligerence. The motive is to obtain a confession, or information that would lead to the crime being solved.
The technique is even used in legal negotiations, according to a Harvard University publication, though the strategy is played out in a much more subtle form. Like the fictional scenario described above, it involves two people working as a team with the goal of gaining an advantage over an opposing party. An example was given of a lawyer proposing an insulting settlement sum and then being chastised by a colleague on the same team. This served to make the aggrieved party more open to the colleague doing the chastising who invariably was able to seal the deal for less than it should have cost.
Theoretically, it appears that this is an approach that works. The Government of Guyana is au fait with it and even has its own blueprint: ‘bad cop, worse cop’, as it continues to demonstrate in its dealings with the nation’s public school teachers and their union. On Thursday last, days before the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) was scheduled to meet with the Ministry of Education (MoE) for negotiations Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo declared a coming offensive against these teachers. He announced at a press conference that the government was exploring e-schooling and funding private school education as options for the nation’s children. Given the current climate that was a barely disguised gauntlet thrown down to the GTU. That was the ‘worse cop’ scenario.
On Monday, when the GTU and the MoE met, the former presented a contracted proposal (2022-2025 rather than 2019-2024), holding out for a back-dated, multi-year agreement on salaries and benefits for teachers. The latter seemed unwilling to compromise on its stance of only considering the current year and going forward, though offering a promise to consider the new proposal. Negotiations tend to involve both sides giving a little so that they could meet in the middle. The GTU saw no indication that the MoE intended to budge; it had not prepared a counter offer. That was the ‘bad cop’ scenario.
This blueprint would only work if the strike-fatigued GTU caved to the immoveable MoE and ended the industrial action right now. This is unlikely as if it did it stood to lose the respect and support of its members. More than that, for all of Mr Jagdeo’s bellicosity last Thursday, the government’s so-called options as he outlined are improbable at best.
With regard to e-schooling, or e-learning (short for electronic learning) as it is properly called, the true pilot test for this was the Covid-19 lockdown when schools were closed. Those months brought about the realisation that while e-learning could and does work at the tertiary level, it is unsuitable for nursery, primary and secondary school students. These are the ages at which children thrive best by being with and among their peers in a physical setting. The extended period at home during the lockdown resulted in a general dumbing down worldwide – that the education sector is still struggling to recover from – even among those students who had access to e-learning from day one. It also affected the mental health of many children who were used to physical interaction. Furthermore, some parents were able to remain at home with their children during the lockdown as their workplaces were also closed. The same would not prevail now; who will supervise these proposed e-learners?
As regards the idea of the government paying for public school students to attend private schools, one wonders where on earth they would all fit should parents decide on that option. Notwithstanding the fact that not all private schools are equal, at present, the best in the country are often forced to turn away applicants. They tend to have smaller class sizes than public schools. The administrators of these schools are aware that if they compromise on quantity, quality will suffer. But perhaps, there is some grand scheme to encourage and champion the opening of more private schools. Who knows?
Apart from that, Mr Jagdeo’s other utterances have revealed that citizens were surely being misled pertaining to the success of the local education sector as peddled by the government. He stated at his press conference that of the estimated 14,000 teachers in the public school system, some 4,000 were guilty of constant absenteeism prior to the strike. Further, he warned that high school graduates with only two passes at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations would no longer be allowed to teach in public schools.
If the information in those statements made by Mr Jagdeo are neither exaggerated nor outdated then the government has been seriously shortchanging the children of this nation by allowing such a flagrant misdeed as teacher absenteeism to go unchecked. Moreover, what individual or agency was responsible for hiring high school graduates with two CSEC passes to teach in the first place? If one of the outcomes of the current strike is improved performance and accountability in the classroom, as highlighted by the Vice President in his call for “better quality teachers” then they must be commended and not vilified for bringing this to the forefront by their industrial action.
All of Guyana’s children deserve the best quality education possible and quality teachers deserve quality remuneration. This is truly no time for bluffing and all the other shenanigans that are seriously imperilling the nation’s future. The ‘bad cop’, ‘worse cop’ routine not only lacks efficacy but it is nothing short of callous. The government needs to show that it truly embraces leadership, rather than appearing to be a grudgeful, vengeful entity.