Keep gripping education by the scruff

Jul 02, 2017 Features / Columnists, My Column

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The release of the National Grade Six Assessment results took me back nearly sixty years when I did the same examinations. There is a saying that the more things change the more they remain the same. Just before the release of the results, the parents were more nervous than the children. It was the same when I wrote those examinations.
The results were released during the August holidays—these days I hear about summer holidays as though we have a special period called summer. Being little children we were all enjoying the break from school. There were no cellular phones. The postal service had to do, but the newspapers were the major source.
I still remember playing cricket at the Den Amstel pavilion when my sister came running up. Even before she was close she was screaming my name and telling me that I needed to go home. My heart raced then slowed when she told me that I had passed.
A village indeed raises a child, and so it was that all the neighbours found time to congratulate me and my mother. Fathers are not considered much, because raising the child is the duty of the mother. On that list was my friend and neighbour, George McDonald.
By no stretch of imagination were we the children of rich parents. We weren’t even the children of middle class parents. But we were the products of a disciplined society that set store by education. Lessons were perfunctory, if any at all. I had none, because my mother could not find the seventy-five cents a month.
Anyhow, so it was that our parents had about six weeks to get our things ready. And they did with the support of relatives and close friends.
I had a cursory look at the top one per cent of the successful candidates and I saw the smiles on the faces. I know the feeling in their hearts, because I was there. I could also understand the dejection of those who did not make it. Indeed they had all worked hard, but some not hard enough, because they did not have parents to shepherd them.
Those who did exceedingly well came from homes of affluence. They were the children who had more than adequate supervision, not that it takes money to provide supervision. My mother is semi-literate, but she insisted that I sit with my book. And sit I did, as did my sisters and brothers. My mother always believed that education was the key out of the world of poverty. Today, at 93, she is enjoying the fruits of her labour.
On Friday, when the results were announced, not one parent basking in the glory of their child remembered the protest against the value added tax on private tuition, and none of them will in the coming days. For them it was worth it.
The results also afforded me a chance to examine the performance of the public schools against the private schools. I noticed that the public schools were holding their own, despite the talk that they are poorly staffed and incapable of providing anything of merit.
It is common knowledge that the teachers who are performing in the private schools came out of the public school system. Most of them retired and were gobbled up by the private education system. The younger ones fell in line because they were properly supervised. There was no scope for slacking.
Should this be the case in most of the public schools, one would be very surprised at the output. I still remember when West Ruimveldt Primary School burst on the scene. Such was the result back in 1986 that people accused the teacher, Mr. Wilfred Success, of cheating. They demanded an investigation. Mr. Success repeated that performance and has been doing so every year since then.
There are other teachers in the public school system doing the same thing. Graham’s Hall, Leonora Primary, Cummings Lodge Primary and the list goes on. There are teachers who work. More of them will do so once the level of supervision is adequate. As a former teacher, I know.
I am worried that the gap between the coastal schools and the hinterland schools keeps widening. Trained teachers are not being posted in adequate numbers to those locations. In my day it was not a question of choice, it was a case of assignment. I was sent to Bartica and I do not regret one moment. There were good teachers there.
There is a Dr Dawn King-Fox at the University of Guyana. She graduated from St Anthony’s Roman Catholic School in Bartica. She was posted to President’s College and the rest is history. There are others like her.
What was revealing is that in one short year, the system was able to boost passes in English and Mathematics. The remedy cost the government $144 million. Retired teachers with their faculties and skill are making a difference.
They can work and have worked with those children who, like me, never saw a gold spoon, but who have the brain to work under proper guidance. Sadly, not many men are lending their support. If we could increase the number of male teachers by fifty percent who knows where we would end up?
I would also like to see the better trained teachers installed at the lower level of the school system. I understand that the intervention by the government did just that. In one year the children performed admirably in Mathematics and English. Back in my days those two subjects were walkovers, because that was almost all that the schools concentrated on in the primary levels.
Let us go back there. With the foundation, every child with an aptitude for learning would do well. The next year will be better once the intervention continues. Further down the road we would be producing children who would not be running away from Mathematics. We would have radio and television anchors for whom tenses and verbs would be no strangers.
I would not hear the names of people and places being mispronounced so horribly that I would be led to believe that they are talking about a different country and a different person.
Suffice it to say that we have gripped education by the collar, something that should have been done a long time ago. I shared some of these views with the then-Education Minister Priya Manickchand so many years ago.

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