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Whither the remedial literacy programme?

Mar 06, 2010 Editorial

It has been two years now that the Education Ministry has been talking about reversing the country’s declining literacy level. It has also been two years since monies have been voted for literacy programmes country but there has been no visible corresponding improvement in literacy levels.
We are certain that experts fashioned the programmes and that the various human resources were available. At two forums the Education Minister spoke of recruiting retired teachers.
Other programme planners spoke of acquiring the requisite books and the government released millions of dollars. The Education Ministry announced that it was making schools available and of expanding the programme to include illiterate adults.
Of course the plan was laudable. People who lived in Guyana during the glory days when the country was considered the most literate in the Caribbean felt a measure of pride. No more would they have to worry about being the laughing stock of the Caribbean. No more would they have to sit on airlines in embarrassed silence while their countrymen ask air hostesses to fill in their immigration forms.
However, since the launching of the programme Guyanese are hard pressed to find locations where the remedial classes are taking place. It is as if there are no teachers to help the programme. Perhaps it is about pay; perhaps it is about a lack of interest of those who need the education; perhaps it is about adults being embarrassed to expose their shortcomings.
Things should not have reached this stage. Children should have been taught but something horribly wrong is happening. The least qualified teachers are being made to teach the smallest children. With their inexperience these teachers do such a horrible job that children leave primary school unable to read.
By this time it is impossible to reverse the academic decline in the child because the other teachers are only going to concentrate on those who display a drive to learn; those who would appear to be successful at external examinations; those who by their performance would bring credit to the school.
There is supposed to be another literacy programme in schools. The Education Ministry voted in excess of $100 million for the remedial literacy programme in schools. This was to have been undertaken simultaneous with regular classes.
Retired teachers were supposed to have been hired and for a brief while, one believed that there was a level of seriousness in recruiting retired teachers. The first fifteen were recruited last year and since then there has been no word of further recruitment. Perhaps this recruitment is being done secretly.
Jamaica once tackled the problem of illiteracy with gusto the point that its level of illiteracy is declining. The programme was called Jamaica Adult Literacy programme and teachers, with little incentive, approached the task of providing education. The country recognised that without an education people would contribute to the rise in the rate of murders and other violent crimes. They would lack the ability to reason and would therefore behave like the lower animals.
In Guyana, the programme should be attacked with equal gusto. The difference is that those who are to execute it are demanding adequate compensation. One would assume that compensation should be no major task given the vast sums being disbursed for the literacy programme.
However, there is the sneaking suspicion that Guyana has over-extended itself. It did just that when it expanded its trainee-nursing programme. The rate of failure is astronomical (some say that the pass rate is a mere five per cent).
It is the same with the teaching programme. The pass rate is not what it should be but the schools need teachers so it is a case of taking whatever there is.
The result is that remedial programmes are going nowhere.

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