Our education system will continue to be unsettled

Jul 20, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,

Someone told me that too much intervention in the education system is defeating its own purpose. Too many experts are advising our education personnel and it would appear that once these experts are offering to spend their money we give them access to our Education system to fiddle with our teachers and children.

It’s all well and good if we ask them to assist in infrastructure and not to introduce their expertise in the curriculum.

Far too often our system is battered with new programmes, new methods, new this and new that. Too many things are piloted in our schools thus disrupting the smooth flow of the curriculum.

I often ask about the system that was used about 40 years ago to get children to read and do sums. Our grades one, two and three children must have their curriculum trimmed to allow enough time to do reading and writing, and basic numeracy. Their time-table must not have the other subjects which they would easily grasp from grade four. I am a strong believer in the fact that if a child cannot read by the time he/she reaches grade four, then difficulty follows all academic learning afterwards.

Our education system will continue to be unsettled as long as we continually introduce programmes and experts at the lower level of the system. In the first four years at the primary level, the education system must have a curriculum that must not be tampered with by experts.

Presently, the burning issue is about placement.

Every year we are introduced to new processes and procedures just to allocate places at secondary schools.

This is always a contentious issue. Some secondary schools have poor reputations, which are known to parents and even to the education officers, yet children with marks that can allow them to other schools are forced by the new system to go to those schools. The Ministry of Education should, firstly, put those schools in order before forcing parents to send their children there.

We are hearing about Universal Secondary Education and wonder whose idea it was that allowed, or are forcing children to have an aptitude for vocational areas into academic fields. This alone creates a plethora of ills in the classrooms.

Teachers often remark that some of those who created that system should have a stint in the classroom as a teacher.

However, our people who direct education must sit back and look at what the schools are not producing and to take a hint from those at the bottom, sometimes.

Retired Teacher

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