Education and Development

Sep 04, 2008 Editorial

September, in addition to being designated “Amerindian Heritage Month”, is also “Education Month” not entirely coincidentally, since this month marks the beginning of a new school year for all our educational institutions.
Modern development theories all now confirm that an educated population is a prerequisite for developing countries to rise out of poverty and consequently universal primary education is one of the Millennium Goals that have been established by the UN. There can be no development without education.
In Guyana, we can be proud that we have already practically achieved universal primary education. Even critics of the present administration have to concede that the revitalization of the education sector – especially at the primary and secondary levels – has been one of their priorities. There are evident problems at our sole university and it is hoped that these will be addressed since many of the new “knowledge industries” that have catapulted several countries from Third World status to that of the First World, demand tertiary education.
In many countries that have been wracked by conflict there has often been a deliberate neglect of education. Lack of education allows easier political and economic control and thus is in the interest of the powerful elite. Those with less education usually have less income and also have more difficulty understanding their own predicament. Thus, these people are more vulnerable in both social and economic terms, and often become dependent on the powerful in society for supplying many of their basic needs. In Guyana, however, the neglect of education often lies within the family.
Family problems are a major reason why education is not prioritized and we have seen that most of the young men who have gravitated to a life of crime and are being gunned down by law enforcement officials in the last decade are products of such environments. Poor families are unstructured; fathers are frequently absent and sometimes have been replaced by the mother’s latest partner. The level of intra-household conflict and even physical violence is high, but remains veiled as women fear the consequences of reporting the abuse or being abandoned. Additionally, parents who did not get a good education normally do not attribute importance to education for their children. All this reflects on the child, who invariably brings to the school the conflicts they face at home.
Some educators believe that the current official school model is not completely compatible with the idea of opening minds and developing human capabilities. For them, basic schooling in Guyana is extremely conservative. It does not provide empowerment. Like those in many other developing societies, our schools tend to be authoritarian and they end up producing authoritarian dropouts.
While our Government has placed a commendable emphasis on primary schooling, we still have a far distance to travel. As much as a quarter of our population cannot fully read and write, and half are functionally illiterate–they can read, but cannot comprehend the full meaning of what they read or make a connection to other issues. This is both a development problem and a problem for development.
For instance, most of the interventions of the state and other NGO’s into poor communities are based on methodologies that premised on the recipients being cognitively capable of dealing with presentations made in structured meetings that often fly over their heads. Generally, those who are functionally illiterate know their restrictions and will not want to (or be able to) fully participate in such meetings.
The concept of “empowerment” as advanced by the Brazilian academic Paulo Freire, is very important in developing countries, such as ours. Freire rightly saw empowerment as a path to freedom. In his view, the functionally illiterate should be educated with pedagogy capable of opening their minds to a broader understanding of the reality in which they live. This means not only teaching them to read and write but giving them social, political, and economic awareness and skills which will enable them not only to more fully understand, but also participate in their own, their family’s and their community’s lives.
This point suggests that our Ministry of Education must go beyond the classrooms of all the newly-built schools and enter the “bottom-houses” so that all our people receive the benefits of an “education” for their, and the country’s, development.

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