The new school term and the challenges

Sep 04, 2016 Editorial, Features / Columnists

Schools reopen tomorrow. Over the past few days there was the traditional rush by parents to get clothing for the children. People could be seen walking from store to store hunting bargains. Of course, each store had something on offer. There was footwear, the various coloured and striped shirts and the other things that children need.
Initially, there were the complaints about prices. Many parents felt that the prices were much higher this year, and then something happened. The ubiquitous Chinese stores were there under selling the traditional stores. Competition has its advantages.
One thing that seems unexplainable is the markup some of these stores put on their products. Given the large number of children heading to school, one would have expected an automatic lowering of the prices. Money is not at a premium for most of the people sending their children to school, some for the first time.
But getting the children to school is only a part of the problem. The rest is the long road to see that these children remain in school. Each year when the academic results come in, there is a lot of boasting about how good these children perform. Just recently there was the hype about the performances at the National Grade Six Assessment.
What is not readily understood is that the hype is about the top five per cent of the children who sit the examinations. Another five per cent would be heading to the less rated secondary schools where some of them would become late developers to challenge their more recognized peers later in life.
The problem surrounds the overwhelming majority. Many of them would be forced into schools, but these are the children who often see themselves as failures and would become the rebels in the classroom. We have seen the results of teachers trying to get some of them in line. It is no longer unthinkable to see parents barging into schools to assault teachers.
Immediately this sends a signal to other teachers to leave the errant child to do as he or she pretty much pleases. We know the result of such a decision. These children breeze through the school and later enter the ranks of the unemployable. And these are the children who are posing problems for the authorities and the administration alike.
There is no end to the call for young people to be granted jobs. This is the ideal situation, but is it as easy as the call sounds?
We have seen letter writers and heard comments about young people being ignored for employment. Many employers complain about the quality of the applicants. Some actually boast degrees from the University of Guyana, but as a former Minister of Education (Rev. Dale Bisnauth) once noted, there is a high percent of functionally illiterate people among the graduates.
It is here that one misses the supporting institutions that were allowed to lapse or collapse. The numerous technical institutes are under-utilised. Indeed they help to improve the skills of people in the industrial and communications sector, but they largely attract those young people whose parents simply want them out of the house but off the streets. But for these children learning is not uppermost in their minds.
And so it is that people are calling for a return of organisations like the Guyana National Service that produced some of the better artisans the country has known. But one would suspect that the economy is in no position to support such organisations at this time.
So it is that as parents prepare to send their children to school for the new school year they should be prepared to do more than keep the children out of the house. They should also be prepared to support the teachers and the educational efforts. Right now, only the children of the more financially capable families do well.

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