An APNU/AFC govt. will adopt the “no child left behind” policy to reduce poverty

Mar 07, 2015 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
Among the concerns the people should raise in the upcoming election is the availability of resources to help the poor. The adage ‘to be poor is a crime’ is quite familiar to most Guyanese. However, poverty is much more. Poverty is a form of punishment that delays and stifles the full potential of human development. To be poor in Guyana is like having a lifelong sickness, a chronic and crippling condition that affects the mind, body and spirit.
Poverty is a social condition which affects more than half of the country’s population, most of whom live on or below US$4.25 a day, which means that they have and continue to live in extreme poverty. Disturbingly, women and children account for a sizeable portion of those who live in extreme poverty in Guyana.
This is most unacceptable in modern day Guyana, which President Ramotar claims to have had an increase in GDP of 25 percent in the last three years. If this is true, then why poverty is still on the increase? The truth is the minority PPP government has done absolutely nothing to ease the burden on the poor. Instead, most of the economic policies they have implemented over the last 15 years have benefited their rich friends and relatives.
Guyana, like any other developing country, continues to struggle with measures to alleviate poverty where more than 300,000 Guyanese live below the poverty line. These statistics speak volumes and require urgent governmental intervention in order to reduce poverty and maintain sustainable human and economic development.
In this election, the people should demand a solid investment in education which is the only way to break the cycle of poverty that has entrapped and destroyed thousands of Guyanese families. It is well documented that many children raised in poverty enter school a few steps behind their affluent peers. The cognitive stimulation parents provide in the early childhood years is crucial and the most critical years of a child’s development are from birth to age five. This is exactly why the PPP should have invested more in early childhood education to ensure that each institution has trained teachers with the necessary skills to mould these young lives.
A substantial increase in funding is necessary in order to bridge the socio-economic divide at the primary level of the public education system. A country’s brightest minds should be at the foundation level working to stimulate the minds of the very young. However, this is not the case in Guyana where under the PPP regime, the poor are left to fend for themselves as their children suffer.
Unlike the affluent, the majority of students attending public schools are from economically disadvantaged families. Such families are those with parents whose incomes are less than what is required to purchase and satisfy basic needs of food, shelter and clothing. Is it that the rich do not have confidence in the public school system? Or is it that more than 60 per cent of the country’s primary and secondary schools are failing in their education delivery to the nation’s children? So clearly what we have in Guyana is a failing public education system which the PPP regime has ignored over the years.
Educators Robert H. Bradley and Robert F. Corwyn of Arkansas University have stated that risk and resilience in children have shown that family income correlates significantly with children’s success. Poor children are half as likely as well-off children to be taken to museums, theatres or the library, and they are less likely to go on vacations or on other fun or culturally enriching outings with their parents.
The Ministry of Education has been lacking in helping the many emotionally dysfunctional students in the public schools because they are poor. Poverty should not be an excuse not to succeed; however, poverty does impact the development of one’s brain and this will certainly impair one’s success. Children raised in poverty are much less likely to have critical social skills. And students from poverty-stricken backgrounds are more likely to drop out of school than their peers from affluent backgrounds. Many poor students, especially in the inner-city communities, have little or no support and are being left to chance to succeed.
During the past 15 years, the Jagdeo/Ramotar cabal has done a disservice to the children from poor socio-economic backgrounds. The Ministry of Education ought to know that students cannot be expected to function at a high academic level when their basic needs for food, shelter, medical care, safety and family are not met. In Guyana, a significant percentage of children struggle on a daily basis to have their basic needs met, and there are many students who attend school daily without having breakfast.
However, unlike the uncaring PPP regime, the APNU-AFC Alliance, if elected to office on May 11, will develop a social safety net to address the nature of Guyana’s poverty in the urban centres and the rural areas, where a large percentage of the residents rely on untreated sources for water.
The good news is that the leaders of the Alliance realize that the human spirit is able to overcome adversities, and being raised in poverty is not a sentence to a substandard life. The Alliance will develop policies to help students succeed despite the odds, and to alleviate and empower the poor within the society so that no child is left behind. In the words of the late Nelson Mandela: “Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity; it is an act of justice.”
Dr. Asquith Rose
Chandra Deolall
Dr. Merle Spencer-Marks

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