The Ministry of Education seems to have the most unrealistic people on this planet

Mar 07, 2012 Letters

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Dear Editor,
The Kaieteur News of 25th February, 2012 in the article titled “Students’ role to help realize improvement at CSEC being amplified” begins with the following sentence “Within a matter of months the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate Examination (CSEC) is scheduled to be undertaken and drastic improvements are anticipated given the visionary move by Education Minister, Ms. Priya Manickchand, to direct more teaching efforts into the areas of Math and English.”
I shall be most grateful if you can provide some details as to why this programme has been deemed ‘visionary’. My contention is that this programme is a waste of money and that it is a continuation of the kind of irresponsible spending which characterized the pre-election period of 2011, where all and sundry were given a chunk of change with the expectation that the 24th letter of the alphabet would be placed next to the most popular drinking container on November 28th.
A visionary is someone who has great imagination. If the word ‘visionary’ was applied to the Honourable Minister in this content, then I agree with its usage. It is only in a world of great imagination that a programme like this can produce significantly positive results. That is, an improvement to the 31% Guyana gained in Math in 2011.
Firstly, how are we going to measure the successes of this programme?
Anyone who has done any research at all (it seems we have few of these people at the Ministry of Education) will tell you that to determine the effectiveness of this initiative you must have a control group and an experiment group. The experiment group will be the 36 schools which have been given materials. The control group will be a set of schools where these materials are not used. I am 100% sure that this has not been done and cannot be done, since all schools in this country use these materials; hence, the absurdity of this programme.
However, in August 2012, Minister Manickchand will compare the 2011 and 2012 Math averages of these 36 schools and deduce that there has been improvement. I wish to ask the Honourable Minister now, as I will ask then, how do you know it is the materials or programme which caused the improvement and not some other variable or variables?
The implication for the Guyanese public is that we need to know if the $86.7 million was responsible for the growth. We need to know if the magic formula is to give a calculator, graph book, geometry set, past papers and DVDs and students will pass math. I am sure we could sell the formula to all other CARICOM countries struggling with Math.
In his column titled “Re-thinking Education” in the Sunday Stabroek News of January 29th 2012, Ian McDonald talks about education for the sake of education. I hope it was read by Minister Manickchand. All of the materials provided by the Ministry of Education (MOE) seem to be suggesting that the Ministry is solely concerned with passing the CSEC examination in mathematics and English rather than acquiring the skills associated with mathematics and English language usage.
These subjects, as Dr. McDonald pointed out, should be taught for the sake of educating the individual so that he or she could be a useful member of society. Instead, the Ministry of Education shares out past papers (one hopes MOE acquired copyright permission from CXC) and the answers to these solutions.
Firstly, this indicates that MOE and by extension the Honourable Minister, since it is her vision according to Kaieteur News, is interested with students passing CSEC math, not their ability to problem solve or even pursue further studies in math.
What will be the impact of this initiative on the A-Level programme? Will there be another handing out of materials for CAPE? How do our illustrious CEOs feel about the fact that students are being trained to pass a specific examination rather than taught the subject of mathematics?
Obviously, students will have Grade One in math but will be functionally incompetent when it comes to problem solving. What will be the implications when students go to the University to do mathematics or technology where mathematics is the language of the day?
While I know past papers have always been used, it has never been given this emphasis in the teaching-learning process. My concern is that some teachers and many students will believe that passing mathematics is working past papers which will devour the subject of all skills, beauty, scope and will make it empty.  In the years to come, maybe before Minister Manickchand’s five are up, we will find our teachers teaching from past CSEC papers rather than the curriculum guide. This is already happening at the Grade 6 level.
Several studies have been conducted on the need for calculators for success in mathematics. The debate is inconclusive. For CSEC, there is only one area where a calculator must be used. That area is trigonometry. Nine (9) other areas of the syllabus can be taught without the use of a calculator. I contend that if students did not have a calculator then they would not have failed since they would have passed the other nine areas which do not require the use of a calculator. Additionally, the mental capacity of students is diminished once a dependence on the calculator is developed.
It is strange that teachers would suggest to the Minister that students have been failing because they do not have calculators and the Honourable Minister would accept such madness. What is stranger is that the authorities are exceptionally selective in what they believe from teachers. Teachers have been complaining about poor salaries and working conditions for so long; yet no one has believed this. However, when teachers say students have been failing because they do not have materials everyone believes.
Was any research done to find out if there is a shortage of resources in these 36 schools? Didn’t the Ministry of Education remember that some $200 million was spent on the acquisition of text books less than two years ago? Didn’t the Ministry have the sense to ask what happened to these text books?
Some research should have been done since $86.7 million will be spent. When Dr. Luncheon informed that ‘Cabinet has given approval’, I had hoped that our illustrious Ministers in the Cabinet would have asked these questions. Minister Manickchand must understand that students will never bring these books to school. It is dangerous to their health. These two books combined have in excess of 1300 pages. They are too heavy.
One wonders why the Ministry did not procure Mathematics for CSEC by Sadler (Published by Nelson Thornes) which was written for the 2008 CSEC syllabus and which is a single book. In addition to these 1300 pages for math, students have to now come with past papers, 3 English textbooks and a dictionary. Education is very pragmatic! Students will never walk with these books to school. The Ministry of Education seems to have the most unrealistic people on this planet.
Let me say this, $86.7 has not been spent on a programme. This is not a programme. A programme has components, benchmarks, clearly defined objectives, as well an operational component and some kind of supervisory framework.
This programme has none of these. I dare the Minister to prove me wrong and release the components of this programme. One hopes that there are components considering that $86.7 million has been spent.
It is hilarious that the Ministry of Education has appointed ‘Resource Personnel’ to each of these 36 schools in view of the fact that these ‘Resource Personnel’ are not experienced teachers or teachers at all, or even have specific qualifications in math or English.
One wonders why they are called ‘Resource Personnel’. Imagine these ‘Resource Personnel’ checking a teacher’s notes of lesson and doing clinical supervision of graduate trained teachers. This is microcosmic. Macrocosmically, we have a lawyer running the education system of Guyana.
Mohammed S. Hussain

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