Are we ignoring the fundamentals of our peril

Aug 03, 2008 Features / Columnists, My Column

For some time now I have been noticing that increasingly young people are unable to read or write. This was a phenomenon that was common to old people way back when I was a little boy.

And people expected it from the older people, many of whom had come from a foreign land and for whom English was certainly not their main language.

And if they were indeed born in Guyana they did so at a time when girls were not supposed to get an education and when young boys were expected to help their parents in the world of work to earn a few more cents to keep the pot boiling.

Even when secondary education was a paid for commodity, the primary education was of a standard that some of the young people left the school and became teachers on the recommendation of the head teacher.

Such was the situation that Guyana was said to have the highest literacy level in the Caribbean, to the extent that those who went on to secondary school and then left to further their education found that they were expected to do well.

I still hear the words of Professor Rex Nettleford. “Guyanese always do well”. At the time I was at the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies and indeed, Guyanese always did well.

There were Professor Harry Anamunthadoo, God rest his soul; Professor Charles Denbow; Dr Clarence Kirton; all of them lecturing at the University. And they all remembered Frank Campbell getting the first distinction in Communication.

This trend was the same everywhere. Once you came from Guyana you were bright and even the people with whom you studied expected you to top them.

And so it was with shock that a friend complained to me that during the just concluded house-to-house registration many young people resorted to thumbprints.

I refused to believe at first and I said that this might have been the case in those depressed areas where the children were left to fend for themselves from an early age.

But this friend informed me that this was not the case, that almost in every corner there were people who could not read or write.

I then wrote something about this and held numerous discussions with various Education Ministers, most recently with Minister Shaik Baksh who acknowledged that there is a problem in the education system.

I later learnt that there were numerous factors that combined to create this situation. One of them had to do with the fact that many schools placed their best teachers in the higher forms and the worst in the lower forms.

I suppose it made sense to the head teachers who felt that the best teachers were the ones who would get results at the external examinations.

However, it perhaps never crossed the minds of these head teachers that unless the child had a sound foundation then when he or she reached the higher forms the performance would be just as bad and the success anticipated would not be achieved.

Another factor had to do with parents who sincerely believed that the teachers would have to do everything; that they, the parents, only had to provide food, clothing and shelter.

In my younger days, every parent knew that it was important to ensure that the child pick up a book. Those who were reluctant to pick up that book felt the pain of being disobedient to the parent.

Then there was the magic box called television. Those who had those boxes in their homes simply allowed the child to sit in front of them at every opportunity. This was supposed to keep the child out of trouble.

The result is that we have an entire generation incapable of even reasoning. These are the gunmen and the prostitutes who believe that their chosen path is the only way to make money.

This malady is not confined to the streets. There are also young people seeking jobs as reporters and nurses and policemen and soldiers and office workers. They can read a little but they simply cannot translate what they read.

These are the people who now have people calling the various newspapers and television stations to complain about the bad language, the mistakes in basic advertisements, and the other ills that are presented to the public.

I am sure, however, that this trend can be reversed. Already the government has injected in excess of $100 million to effect a literacy programme countrywide.

The next step is for the schools to ensure that the better teachers are placed in the lower forms so that the children could be properly taught.

It is not going to make sense to ask parents to focus a bit on the children because as the saying goes, “Boat gone a falls can’t tun back.”