Education is the eternal foundation of a nation’s development

Feb 07, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
The decline of education in Guyana since the 1980s until today has been a major concern for every educated Guyanese citizen living and working in Guyana.
As our political and economic condition deteriorated many of our qualified teachers left the country seeking better jobs with better pay and better job incentives. When teachers are poorly paid, the education system cannot attract and keep qualified teachers. The effect of these conditions on student performance is reflected on failures at the primary, secondary and university level.
Education is the eternal foundation of a nation’s development, but there has been a greater decline of education in Guyana as we entered into this modern era of technology. The absence of trained qualified teachers created more under-qualified teachers teaching in our schools today as a result of ‘children teaching children’. Performance at common entrance exams as well as CXC and GCE are very disappointing. Failures at the University of Guyana have now become a major concern for the business sector as well as the government institutions.
Graduating dysfunctional illiterates with the lowest GPA as low as 1.6 has created a monster in this nation. Students that are qualified with 6-8 subjects and even university graduates cannot function properly on a job. Many of them cannot write a report, a proper job application letter, they cannot do basic arithmetic, yet they are given a certificate as a very qualify academic.
I know of many students attending primary school in grades 4,5, and 6 cannot read nor write a proper sentence. Some of them I know of cannot read at all. Just last week at my church I asked two girls in our Sunday school to read a simple scripture verse on our black board. To my amazement these girls cannot read at all and they were in grade 6. I still wondered how these girls reached to grade 6 then they will write the grade 6 assessment exams in April and they will probably pass to go to a very big or lower high school completely illiterate. This is a very dismal situation where not only these two students attending school is illiterate, but thousands more like those all across this nation.
Our entire education system is now sheer guess work and the teaching I see that is happening in school is just a ‘hit and miss’ method where ‘who learn learn’ but nothing of any intellectual substance is being taught to our pupils and students in our schools.
The true foundation of education is reading. Today students are seen with ipods, blackberry and all sorts of technical equipment attached to their ear, but a good book for them is something obsolete.
My visits to several libraries have proven this fact because I haven’t seen a great number of students reading and doing research. Today, television and DVD also vulgar music has taken a toll on our young generation. It has created more and more dunces, school dropouts, drug addicts, prostitutes, street vendors etc. We are just one generation away from complete illiteracy.
The school discipline that was in the Ministry of Education 30 years ago is now thrown out of the school windows. The removal of corporal punishment from our schools created more disobedient pupils and students. Teachers are unable to deal with indiscipline students, thus the teachers are now afraid of some students and their parents. A child without a proper education and great moral upbringing will be another nuisance in society. Most of the problems we have seen in domestic violence, drug addiction, prostitution, stealing etc. is the direct result of illiteracy and poor parental guidance.
In over 50% of our homes in Guyana reading and writing has been a problem. A survey among the religious community also depicted that over 60% of families attending churches cannot read nor write at a very competent level. Many of our young people today in our society cannot write their own names properly.
As a legal marriage officer I discovered that a great many of our young Guyanese citizens will spell their own names wrong when they write it; while some will write a ‘call name’ but cannot spell out their real names on their birth certificates. While I am not against technology, I believe this age of technology has helped to create more illiterates and dunces.
Our poor education system has failed since the late L.F.S Burnham introduced free education from nursery to secondary schools. This free system of education failed because our schools cannot produce text books for students writing CXC thus their parents are pushed to buy thousands of dollars worth of photocopy books from some corrupt store owners.
I am still wondering why this incompetent printing press I am reading about in the news cannot print free text books for high school and university students. The printing press can even sell the books at a cheaper rate to students and our government should jail all those who sell pirated photocopy books.
Where have we failed in our education system? First the free education that was advocated by Burnham since the 1970s did not push our system of education to be competitive with our Caribbean neighbours. Our country Guyana failed to produce better graduates than Barbados, Trinidad, Jamaica etc. and the wider Caribbean. The Caribbean is a very small space of about 6.5 million people; our people are very far behind that small space.
In many of our institutions in Guyana, lots of non-Guyanese are working for higher salaries because our Guyanese people are under-qualified to do the job, and those who are qualified have to pay bribes and get ‘lines’ to acquire a good job. For us to better equip our people academically we will have to return to the old colonial system of education back to basics such as: Grammar, Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, Spelling, English, Reading, Dictation, Geography, History etc.
Today even some well qualified teachers cannot teach proper grammar to a child, many students told me teachers are not taking time off to correct their assignments. So how will that child recognise his/her mistakes?
Many of the subjects that are offered at High School level are mostly business subjects and not some real tough subjects to improve the students’ intellect and thinking power. The teaching of classical literature from Shakespeare to Homer should be re-introduced into our education system. The study of Latin, French, Spanish, Economics, Ethics, Logic, Poetics, Literature & Criticism, History, Astronomy, Biology, Physics, Political Science, Jurisprudence, Religion, Mathematics and the Social Sciences should be in our academic curriculum. All of these subjects will give our students a very lucid and comprehensive understanding about education.
The value of a nation’s wealth and prosperity comes from the value of her educated citizens. Rome ruled and govern the world once because of her supreme intellectual aptitude and power. We cannot compete with a modern civilized world without a classical education. What the University of Guyana as well as the Ministry of Education need is a new constitution of our academic progress in the twenty first century. We need dedicated teachers who will work for their salary and not collect the government’s money by false pretense. The economic progress of this nation comes from education that is the key to our GDP and prosperity. We also need moral education that will include religious education into our schools and universities to build and improve the character of students. The value of our nation will be the value of her people with good character that will involve honesty, integrity, and a belief in God. Ultimately, we must not forget our Creator who gives us wealth, knowledge, and wisdom who is the source of our existence.
The end of education is good character that is the key to our moral, spiritual, intellectual and economic development.
Rev. Gideon Cecil

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