SAVE THE CHILDREN!

Jan 18, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

We are destroying the future of our children. Many of them leave for school early in the mornings and do not get home until late at night, after which they have to complete their homework before retiring.
There is no time for them in the limited sunlight in the afternoon to spend in some sports or other physical activity. There is no time for fun or games or simply relaxing with a good book and enjoying the delights that this can bring.
When we think of why Guyana is no longer producing as many talented young sportsmen and women as before, the answers are clear. The kids of today simply cannot balance schoolwork and recreation. And so there is too little time left for them to enjoy what should be a period to flower and bloom. Instead they are wilting under the pressure of spending too much time in classrooms – the classrooms of extra lessons and the classrooms of long days at school.
After school it is lessons. And by the time the lessons are over daylight has vanished and it is time to get home. By then the children are tired. They have little energy for very little else and all because of the desire to succeed.
This success comes at a great price. Children are losing their precious childhood to extra lessons.
The question is whether they need it. Most of the children who have dominated the regional examinations and the Grade Six assessments have had to attend extra lessons. But last year, the daughter of Ravi Dev, a Sunday columnist of this newspaper topped the country. She gained fifteen Grade ones at her examinations without having to attend extra lessons. Of course she has her father to help. Not all children are blessed with brilliant parents to help them avoid having to attend extra lessons.
Most parents will argue that the extra lessons are necessary, that without it the children would not do well. Most of them are not willing to take the chance of not sending their children to lessons.
And they should not be faulted for this because the opportunities in life do not come easy and therefore there is competition to be the best, so as to secure these opportunities.
There are also serious problems within the school system and this is reflected in the general pass rate for Mathematics and English. The poor pass rate suggests that the children need help within the school system, but this help is simply not there.
As such the system also contributes to the extra lessons syndrome which is destroying our children. Teachers are said to be underpaid, but little assessment is usually made also about the gross underperformance of many teachers. They fail to complete all the material for their subjects they teach, and in many instances, are not overtly worried about the failure rate, blaming the quality of the children.
Any teacher should be ashamed to be blaming children for underperformance, since it is the responsibility of the teachers to ensure that the children absorb what is taught in school.
There are some teachers who seem to care very little about the children in the school or even about teaching in the school. They are more concerned about using the schools to recruit students for extra lessons. The money they make by extra lessons is many times that which they make as normal teachers, and many of them are making a great deal of money and are not delivering in school.
Many years ago, an agreement was reached that allowed teachers to give extra lessons in school as a means of supplementing their income. This practice was abolished a few years ago and it has not affected teachers. They are finding places to give the lessons and the school classroom is once again becoming a recruiting station for extra lessons.
These extra lessons are not going to disappear, not as long as the education standard remains as it is, and not as long as serious action is not taken against teachers who do not complete the subject syllabuses in the school classroom.
Extra lessons will also continue because there are many parents who want the added help for their children and are willing to pay for it. But in the process they should realize the damage that all these extra lessons are doing to the kids,
It is robbing them of their childhood, something that cannot be replaced.

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