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Empowering our young school children with breakfast

Mar 02, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,

I refer to an article captioned: “Union calls for changes to the secondary school system” of 23 February 2009. This letter is inspired by the said article but not based on it.

Many years ago my father, F.W.E. Case, probably Guyana’s greatest educator and educationist, told me that in developing countries like Guyana the single most important factor in educating young children is that they have a proper breakfast at the start of the school day. He went on to say that children may have the ability to learn but not necessarily the willingness. Both can be stimulated by good teaching, but not if the pupil is distracted by hunger or family problems.

In your article, Mr. Colin Bynoe, “a teacher with some 31 years of service” tells us that “a large number of children in the education system hail from single-parent families, many of which are on the poverty line.”

 

We can and must do better than this.

The 2009 Budget in its sterility is insensitive to the real needs of an impoverished people, though it boasts of an allocation of $20.4 billion for the education sector with $3.6 billion for capital projects and $16.8 billion for operational expenditure. It is true that the basic Nutrition Programme has been given an allocation of $190 million intended to benefit 20,000 persons in total, but its focus seems to be on facilitating continued capacity building of health-care workers in nutrition education and a three-year nutrition strategy and so on. My, my, it even caters for the acceleration of a national deworming exercise in 2009.

But what about breakfast for the tots who leave home every morning for school with their little stomachs empty. Can we not consider providing them with an adequate breakfast to stop their craving and enhance their learning ability? Government could consider scrapping the $3.6 billion allocation for capital projects. Guyana does not need any more new schools without teachers. However, keep a small part of the $3.6 billion to convert pit latrines in the primary school system to more modern structures. The balance can then be used to provide each needy child under 10 years old with a solid well-balanced breakfast for the approximately 200 school days annually. These hungry learners in need of breakfast may total between 50,000 and 60,000 country-wide.

The 2009 Budget carries a section titled: “Vulnerable Groups and Other Targeted Interventions.” It then goes on to say, rather glibly, that “the task of protecting and empowering our children and young people, women, and the elderly, is critical to our development as a nation”.

Government should start with the hungry school children and empower them with breakfast.

F. Hamley Case

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