The education debacle

Apr 30, 2014 Letters

Dear Editor,
So elections seem on then off but for those politicians in the PPP who feel that they can mislead the people for five years and then take a dip in the Atlantic Ocean and all their sins against the people will be lost, have got to be dreaming.
Does this statement by Minister Priya Manickchand to teachers feel like one from another dreamer – “If you don’t like your salary, quit?”
In May 2012, Minister Manickchand issued that statement in New Amsterdam when the overwhelming majority of teachers at the meeting rejected the automatic promotion of students who fail their exams and requested more pay to conduct the remedial classes to help students pass.
Their justification – they have needs to fulfill at home also and they cannot do extra lessons for free. In reaction to the teachers, that crass statement from the Minister was issued. Well they have got no money and the students continue to fail in increasing numbers. Guyana is worst off all because the politicians want to dominate and control the spending of the majority of the taxpayers’ resources, in many cases for their personal benefit, while the working class has to settle for the crumbs from the Treasury.
As a results of poor leadership in the education portfolio since then, the pass rates in one of the most important subjects to survive in real life (Mathematics) has plummeted from 34 percent to 29 percent since Minister Shaik Baksh left the system. Maybe the good teachers did take her advice and left the system since this “fatwa” was issued.
How can someone lead without understanding the socio-economic condition of her team? Does she not know that teachers also have their own children to teach when they get home, to cook, clean, to run personal errands and to prepare for school next day when they get home?
How can she be so insensitive to the needs of our teachers? Is this “priyanomics” – squeeze the poor to feed the rich with no concern for the collateral damage?
This same kind of insensitivity was also express to former APNU MP Jaipaul Sharma in a most vulgar manner in Parliament clearly confirming that there is more than a leadership issue under question; it seems that a character deficiency is alive and well at the highest levels in the Minister of Education and all our student are set to suffer unless President Ramotar clean up the system.
We would not be surprised if more than 71 percent of our CSEC student fails Mathematics in 2014, after all they are suffering from intellectual bankruptcy at the highest levels in the Ministry of Education which is failing to put the necessary systems in place to support their cause.
So in the final analysis, the PPP cannot getaway with abusing the education system and expect Guyana to progress.
Dr. Asquith Rose and Harish Singh

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The education debacle

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