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Ample technical educators lacking in education system
– Technical Expert
Although the public education system has long been faced with a shortage of teachers, the shortage of technical educators far out-weighs the other subject areas. This observation was recently made by technical education expert, Mr. Andy Moore. Moore is a former technical educator in the public education system who continues to play a significant role in this area.
According to Moore, the shortage has been in existence for many decades and there seems to be no end in sight. Back in the day when Moore graduated from the Cyril Potter College of Education qualified as technical educator, he was among a batch of 33. He says that was the largest batch of teachers ever to graduate in technical education.
“There is no other area of education where there is such a shortage of teachers as in technical education…this has been going on all the time,” said Moore as he stressed the need for more focus on the technical aspect of education. He is worried that the continued tactic to segregate technical education and academics is a troubling state of affairs.
Moore suggested that not being able to offer children the appropriate level of education in any area is in fact tantamount to child abuse. He qualified his statement by pointing out that “child abuse is not only physical, it is emotional, it is social, it is neglect and it is not providing children with those things that the law demands that we provide. It means then that if I fulfil all my obligations [as a parent] and send my children to school and the school is negligent, whether by accident, intention or arrogance, and don’t provide for what the constitution says for children, is it not child abuse in the same way?”
According to Moore, too, “if you check back, you will observe there are very little or no technical education systems available in some schools.” In fact he recalled that when he was teaching in Georgetown back in 1972, there were 13 schools offering technical education. But, according to Moore, to date there are far fewer technical schools.
Technical Expert, Mr. Andy Moore
In 1972, Moore was the Secretary to the Industrial Arts Association, a body tasked with examining technical education. This was important Moore said, “because we realised that there was a shortage of technical teachers since then.”
He noted that although immense focus has always been given to academic subjects, all subject areas, including those that are technical, require adequate teaching in order for children to truly learn. “I don’t care what kind of teaching you do, all of us are imparting knowledge, whether you are teaching Mathematics or Woodwork. It is therefore my firm conviction that most teaching should go on generally at the same place so that we can understand what each other do and complement each other,” said Moore.
He shared his conviction that “what is happening in this country is that people are saying to me up to now, this boy can’t read and write so let him go and do technical education. So how is he going to read the technical education book?”Moore questioned.
According to Moore, there is no other subject area that an individual has to use exact language as much as in technical education. He explained that in technical education, “no two words mean the same thing; in English you can get away with that.”
He continued, “It is my feelings that in ignorance, arrogance and intentions, quite a lot of our youths, males in particular, have fallen through the cracks simply because they were not provided with an avenue to develop themselves.”
Moore emphasised too that “It is not the youths who have failed; it is we who have failed to provide for the youths so that they can develop themselves. So much so that when I see how many youths are in prison, it bothers me because I think if we could save half of them by them going to school and having the equipment and the schools to assist them, we could help to solve that kind of problem.”
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