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Failed education and youth delinquency

Aug 26, 2013 Editorial

There have been calls for a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the educational system in the wake of continued abysmal results at the NGSA and CSEC, especially English Language and Mathematics. These calls are very timely but they should be placed within the context of the wider problem of increasing youth delinquency in our society. While the high incidence of violence in our schools was cited, we believe that this is simply the tip of the iceberg of an underlying malaise that has engulfed our youths.
We are sure that a CoI will be able to deal in a comprehensive manner with the phenomenon. However, there should also be a national discourse initiated that might feed into the CoI. There have already been several interventions in this area from several angles and we would like to highlight some of them. The poor performance of our student population is not mono-casual but due to the confluence of several factors.
When the numbers are disaggregated it can be seen that females make up a majority of the “high flyers” that comprise the top 1-25% while boys dominate in the bottom seventy-five percent. While this fact has been cited as a region-wide problem, the authorities continue to avoid dealing with the root causes. The fundamental question is if intelligence is distributed randomly, a proposition that is universally accepted, why is it that the performances of boys are now lagging so far behind that of girls?
While there are many theories, any CoI that hopes to arrive at proposals to deal with the problem must answer this question. One suggestion is that the mode of delivery of information in the classroom is more conducive to females who are socialised to be more passive than males. If, in fact, this is a factor then we will have to look seriously at making the classroom environment much more interactive.
What we would also like to suggest is that the failure of our educational system to impart the education necessary in the present age to enable our males to pursue remunerative career paths, is the primary reason for the increasing levels of youth delinquency. This connection is complex but is translated into the observable primarily male youth delinquency. It is undisputed that early aggressive behaviour in boys definitely leads to difficulties in the classroom. Such difficulties, in turn, may result in a child’s receiving unfavourable evaluations from teachers or peers. The male is socialised not only to be more aggressive but also to be the provider and the protector in the family.
When the socialisation system does not deliver the means necessary for him to play his designated role he inevitably rejects the education system, which is the major socialisation mechanism in our society. The young males then turn to other paths to secure the wherewithal to be “the provider and the protector”. What this means is that they enter the world of juvenile delinquency which blossoms into the life of full blown crime.
The money that is expended to prevent or deal with the burgeoning crime wave is astronomical. What the connection between a failed educational system and juvenile crime would suggest is that we as a nation have been penny wise and pound foolish. We have refused to deploy the appropriate level and type of resources to our educational system on the assumption that we cannot spend more. But when the
products of that failed system turns to crime, the money is thrown at the problem with alacrity. What we are suggesting is that we nip the problem literally in the bud.
We are pleased that it was explicitly stated by those that called for the CoI into our educational system that it is not being done to cast blame. This is a problem that affects every Guyanese family and we cannot afford to “take sides”. The only side is that of our youths who must be socialised into becoming productive and integrated members of our society.

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