We must halt this continuing decline in education

Aug 26, 2016 Editorial, Features / Columnists

There is another reported drop in the performance of students in Mathematics at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations. The reports are that the percentage passes are even lower than last year, and this is worrying.
Coming at a time when Guyana is on the cusp of oil production – when the country would need technicians and engineers – the importance of Mathematics cannot be over-emphasized. One would expect Mathematics would be the most passed subject when one considers that Mathematics is all around us. Numbers dominate our lives.
At every turn people are confronted with numbers, be they the prices for goods, the number plates on vehicles, and even the numbers on telephones. From birth children are confronted with numbers. Even the games they play often involve numbers. So what goes wrong later in life?
Teachers for one reason or the other shy away from this subject, simply because they refuse to apply everyday practices. They have a certain number of pupils in their class, and that should be the starting point for any lesson in Mathematics.
The basics in teaching are that a teacher should move from the known to the unknown. But it would seem that teachers simply do not see the Mathematics around them. Indeed, in years gone by, passes in Mathematics were a given. That is the reason for employers asking for passes in Mathematics and English.
Guyana would have suffered a great loss when other countries made demands on the local teaching resource. The best left and we simply could not replace them fast enough. The others who are left behind never developed teaching skills, to the point where the practical teachers are almost non-existent.
The leading secondary schools must now share teachers in the crucial subject areas such as Mathematics and the sciences. Gone are the days when these schools boasted a surfeit of teachers in these areas.
This situation could be reversed, but there must first be a study of the existing situation. We are spending money on buildings to house these children, but we are not spending enough on training the people who must impart knowledge.
A look at the developed countries would show that no pains are being spared to get children mathematically inclined. For one, there is the focus on computers. These days computers exist in every aspect of life. They are in cars, aircraft, domestic appliances including television sets, and in the field of medicine. These days, without these things one can only imagine what life would be like.
A simple study of training programmes overseas would reveal that there is a concentration on Mathematics. People training to be nurses must have mathematical skills, and for good reason. They must calibrate medicines; they must be able to adjust the equipment which read patients’ vital signs.
Guyana should begin to get the few skilled Mathematics teachers in the society to feature at workshops and to train those who are in the profession. Certainly, these teacher trainers would not be averse to being compensated for their efforts. In fact, the groundswell would be great, because no one ignores money when all that is necessary is a little effort.
Guyana is not alone in this poor performance in Mathematics. The reports suggest that it is widespread in the Caribbean. This may be as a result of the fact that we as a people were trained not to work in the land of our birth, but in the big cities. Our leaders of yore tried to reverse this trend by producing textbooks more suited to our conditions and situations.
But the advent of television, with its exclusive North American and European bias, actually reversed this trend. It took children away from books and so reduced their ability to reason. Mathematics and English language became the biggest losers and as a consequence, the nation.
It is not too late to use the very television to improve our lot.

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