Latest update November 26th, 2024 1:00 AM
Education in Paramakatoi: a means to what end?
From all over Region Eight, children of varying ages flock to the mountaintop village of Paramakatoi to attend the nursery, primary and secondary schools there.
These schools have a student population of approximately 500.
One class in session at the Paramakatoi Secondary School.
Close to 200 of these students are from the villages surrounding Paramakatoi and are housed in the school’s dormitories, as commuting the distance between the schools and their homes is almost impossible.
While most of the students who do not live in Paramakatoi stay in the school dormitories, this newspaper learnt of one student who walks an average of three and a half hours to reach the secondary school in Paramakatoi, and another three and a half hours to get back to her home in the Red Creek area.
The importance of education is easily seen in the dedication of the students at the Paramakatoi schools.
Not all of the teachers at the schools in Paramakatoi are trained teachers, but they are dedicated, and many of them have asserted that they enjoy their work and are happy to contribute to the development of the children of Region Eight.
All of the local teachers of these schools supplement their incomes by farming, each of them tending to their own individual farms. Reports indicate that if these local teachers do not supplement their incomes by farming, they would starve.
This accentuates the fact that the Paramakatoi community is poor; but despite the poverty of the people living there, education is placed at the forefront of things. Children are sent to school, when they could be assisting on the family’s farm, because their parents know that education can make a difference in their children’s lives.
The overall performance of the students in the schools is relatively good, but some of the teachers have noted the difficulty the students face, especially in the areas of English and Mathematics.
The difficulty the students face in the area of English are said to originate from the fact that, for almost all of them, English is not their first language, but is second to their native Patamona dialect.
A Project Trust volunteer, Samuel Simms, who has been living in Paramakatoi, teaching in both the primary and secondary schools for approximately four months, said the students are, for the most part, eager to learn.
However, he said, many of the students in the secondary school lack a solid foundation of many basic principles. This hampers them properly grasping more difficult concepts.
He added that while much attention is paid to the Caribbean Secondary Examination Council (CSEC) examinations, more attention should be paid to ensuring that students in primary schools properly come to terms with basic concepts, especially in the subject areas of English and Mathematics.
For the most part, teachers have said that problems in the schools are minimal, but they highlighted that they are concerned with the hold marijuana has on the Paramakatoi community. Many young adults, it is reported, grow, sell and smoke cannabis.
It is apparently not difficult to procure marijuana in the mountaintop village, and there have been unconfirmed reports that some of the students in the dormitories have begun to indulge in using the drug.
“If students start to smoke weed, then it could be the downfall of the education system here,” said one of the local teachers.
At the same time, concern has been raised by some of the older students as to what sort of future they have after writing their examinations. Many of them do not want to remain in Paramakatoi, and the ones who do well enough to get a scholarship to the University of Guyana (UG) are compelled to take up teaching in Paramakatoi once they have finished their studies.
Other students have also noted that a programme for developing technical skills needs to be set up, as learning different technical skills may be more useful to them, since almost all of them will remain in Region Eight, and will most likely be farmers or miners.
“Teach me about mining, or teach me about farming,” said one fourth form boy, “I am going to be a miner and a farmer, like my father. I do not care about finding the square root of 28.”
This newspaper was told of a girl who took a course in Paramakatoi on arc welding and fabrication at the Industrial Arts Centre in Paramakatoi; she excelled at it. Since there was no programme to allow her to leave Paramakatoi and further develop her skills, she got married and tends to a farm, just like any other girl without the skills she has.
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