Educating the educators in a poor educational system

Feb 20, 2011 News

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By Michael Benjamin

Cries of substandard pay coupled with almost unmanageable students and what many teachers perceive to be inflexible education officials reverberate throughout the corridors of our schools. This has resulted in the unpalatable haemorrhage of skilled and qualified teachers to other overseas institutions.
The old idiom that ‘change is the only constant’ may ring true but as an old sage once noted, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”
Over the years there have been changes within the political administration and the educational sector. Each group enacted unique changes based on its assessment of the situation and what it perceived to be relevant to enhanced learning and development.
When one examines the education system over the years and compares what obtains in relation to the techniques and ploys towards the efficient dispensation of education approximately two decades ago and what obtains today, one notes the different applications of the respective education bosses.
While a certain section of the stakeholders group believes that these changes and strategies are necessary, another section laments the removal of the former systems and initiatives saying that present day ploys and initiatives enacted by the powers within the education system are counterproductive.
Apart from the substandard salaries earned by teachers, these professionals are further precluded from using the cane as a disciplinary tool and are frequently sanctioned by their bosses at the Brickdam head office for numerous infractions.
The lucky teachers with overseas contacts and a plane ticket opt to travel to other countries where it seems their services are respected and they are adequately compensated for their unique input.
Guyanese teachers are in almost every country around the globe, educating foreign children while back here in Guyana the paucity of adequate teaching resources continues to negatively affect the literacy statistics.
I am not a qualified teacher but my knowledge of Spanish encouraged me to volunteer my services to firstly, my alma mater, North Ruimveldt Multilateral School and subsequently, the North Georgetown Secondary School.
I also had the distinct pleasure of teaching the level four students at the St Margaret’s Primary School. The aim here is not necessarily to make comparisons between the tots of St Margaret’s and the teenagers of the Secondary Schools under discussion. However, one cannot help but note the distinct differences in behavioral patterns or receptiveness to the academic material being dispensed.
Further, were I to draw distinctions, then the tots at St Margaret’s Primary would have easily walked away with the honours. The nexus was made to underline the point that once people nurture deep seated respect for their peers, they will conform to the disciplinary strategies enacted for their protection.
During my tenure at the St Margaret’s Primary, I never witnessed any type of corporal punishment as a correctional measure. Yet when questioned about reasons for their astounding adherence to the stipulated rules, the students would reply, “I don’t joke with Ms this or that.”
With this in mind I wish to extract the feasibility of corporal punishment as the deterrent factor to delinquency. One of my former teachers used to say that the very presence of the wild cane sitting motionless on the teacher’s desk served as enough deterrent. “They know that at any time I could opt to use it,” he would reason.
While the above reasoning may prove to be meritorious, the raging debate that suggests the re-enactment of corporal punishment as the catalyst to the reinstatement of discipline in the schools might not hold water when juxtaposed with the argument for adequate recompense for the teachers.
The decisions made by the government officials pertaining to national matters have proven perplexing on many occasions. I have simply relegated such perplexities to a sparse knowledge of the matters or issues under consideration.
However, there are times when I refuse to question my intelligence and simply hold firm to certain views that are too conspicuous to be questioned.
I only recently read of the intentions of government officials to hire Science and Mathematics teachers from abroad, obviously to fill a chasm in that department locally. The issue, however, is not so cut and dried. Already, the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) has signaled that it would reject any recruitment plan that would see foreign teachers being paid more than their local counterparts.
Naturally, this group would question the Government’s rationale to ignore the many cries by the local professionals for a decent take home pay and willingly fork out exorbitant amounts to pay nationals from another country; money that would wend its way into the economy of another territory while leaving local teachers literally scraping to meet the harsh economic demands locally.
The irony of the situation is that many of these international personnel might not possess the skill, expertise and/or knowledge of local teachers but may qualify for super salaries (by dint of the exchange rates) while their local counterparts are sitting on the very gold mine but without the necessary mining tools to procure the benefits.
Absurd nonsense, I say.
One is tempted to ask whether local teachers, if given the necessary exposure, training and resources, would not graduate into competent professionals like their overseas counterparts.
One also mulls whether the government is not re-buying a product that it might have possessed but unwittingly relinquished through negligence and/or shortsightedness.
During my travels around the world I have encountered local teachers who migrated to better their station in life. Only recently, a teacher whom I missed from the system appeared on my Facebook page. She is now employed in the Bahamas with absolutely no regrets.
Yes, our teachers are everywhere—Malaysia, Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, England and the list extends. Those who remain in Guyana are either fiercely patriotic or simply unable to find the required funds and/or contacts to make the overseas move.
It came over as a joke when one realizes that the government has only just awoken from hibernation and discovered that Guyanese teachers are devoid of mathematics and science teaching skills.
I would not be surprised if some of these teachers that take up the offer are from a former migratory batch that was simply fed up with the nonsense that obtained locally and left in search of greener pastures.
If they are re-hired it will be for the comfortable salary that they had touted even before they decided to leave. If per chance these teachers are nationals of other countries, it would be interesting to hear of their pay structure especially with the exchange rate of the US dollar at about $200-1.
It is simply amazing the way the politicians think. As someone said to me, they are the only ones that could make one plus one equal to eleven. Maybe it was a brilliant idea to abolish corporal punishment from in the schools; it might be just as brilliant to introduce it among our government officials.

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