High-pressure learning, NGSA and life skills

Jul 15, 2018 Countryman, Features / Columnists

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By Dennis Nichols

The recent National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) examination results and an article in last Sunday’s Stabroek News on its ‘upsets and … fallout’ have set some of us thinking once more about how our children are being educated.
The SN article used a mother’s perplexity over her child’s examination results and school placement, to zoom in on what some see as the disadvantage children from poor families face in the increasingly competitive arena of primary and secondary education. Thousands of Guyanese parents must indeed empathize with her, and wonder at the glaring disparities.
When someone says her child got ‘the lowest school in Georgetown’ most of us know what she means, and we understand that there is indeed an (unofficial) category consisting of such schools. This is Guyana, where teachers at certain institutions get privileges and perks that have nothing to do with their fixed remuneration, and which are denied to teachers at other schools. These serve as incentives for greater motivation on their part with results that are practically guaranteed. Then come the accolades, the choice secondary schools, and further motivation. Even the kids know how ‘tings go.’
One might say that school education and NGSA results tell only part of a story; the other part is how academic performance later relates to meaningful life skills like motivation, self-control, cooperation, focus, and resilience in helping to build a better society. Childhood development experts say such skills are far better predictors of long-term success than high grades, something that our high school graduates and young adults are finding out more and more.
One such expert in the United States asked what are we trying to do when we think about raising children. He answered himself: “We’re trying to put in place the ingredients so the child is going to be a successful 35-year-old; it’s not really about getting an A in Algebra.” What he meant by successful is unclear, but here in Guyana, it may firstly be about getting your child into Queen’s College, Bishops’ or St. Rose’s, at high cost, and hoping that both your child and his/her teachers live up to expectations. That’s pressure.
It starts early – getting into the ‘right’ primary school, the ‘good’ nursery school and possibly the most progressive-sounding play school. The pressure to succeed academically is as heavy as the book-laden backpacks some children have to tote to and from school. (And that’s another thing – research, according to WebMd, has shown that such oversized and overweight carriers can cause mild to ‘very bad’ back pain in young children, while it has been shown that adults with severe back problems often had back pain as kids.)
But who cares, apart from those children that complain? Not the parents who feel high marks and their children’s photographs in the newspapers are worth the pressure and the pain, or the teachers who think similarly. In some instances it appears that there are groups of adults who form their own Parent-Teacher Associations parallel to the mandated ones, and whose sole aim is the academic success of their charges. Cramming and rote learning in the classroom and repetitive extra lessons leave little time for physical education, sports, and other social and extra-curricular activities necessary for rounded development, not to mention the life skills referred to earlier.
Yet it could be argued that these life skills are more likely to be either taught or learned incidentally in the ‘better’ schools (including the private ones populated mostly by the children of well-to-do parents) and in their homes, since many such parents possess the educational and societal resources to push their children in that direction. So for some poorer families, it could be a double whammy for those children who, in addition to financial lack, are not adequately exposed to these skills either at home or at school, because the adults in their lives aren’t endowed or motivated toward that end.
There are some children whose parents, though poor and living in depressed areas, have the discipline and wherewithal, apart from financial means, to guide them to all kinds of success early in life, and later in adulthood. These, I suspect, may be relatively few, but in my opinion, they offer the best hope for a marriage of academic success and life skills that will produce the kind of rounded citizenry Guyana desperately needs. We have so many ‘highly-educated’ politicians, economists, luminaries, business folk, and sundry leaders leading this nation on meandering paths, only to end up in circles.
How many of the youngsters whose faces are splashed across the newspaper pages with the release of examination results, will stay in Guyana and slog through our iffy job market after secondary and/or local tertiary education? How many are thinking of leaving for greener and colder climes; how many will return to help develop Guyana, putting service before salary? And how many in the ‘other’ category – the unseen faces of those with less than laudable results, will succumb to disappointment and apathy or transfer their (street) life skills to criminal pursuit? The numbers are inexact, but the trends are there.
Here’s what I consider a few basic educational and life-skill guidelines to parents and teachers based on my own observations, experiences, and father-teacher roles, as well as the research of experts. I am not one of the last, and I’ve made a couple of blunders with my own children, so some of them are also painful reminders for me.
Start with tenacious efforts to have both parents in your child’s life, from gestation to graduation; high school at the least. Womb-speak to your foetus. Engage with toddlers physically and emotionally, often, and allow them to express their emotions within reasonable limits. Model to them actions that show compassion, tolerance, and resilience, even when you think they’re not watching. Read to them and explain fundamental ideas about life, even if they don’t appear to understand.
Finally, and this is a big one for me, speak to them from toddlerhood, as often as possible in simple but grammatically-standard English sentences, and encourage them to respond likewise. There’s nothing wrong with using Creolese or the vernacular; in fact they could contribute to that well-rounded personality I alluded to. But in my years of formal teaching (1976 to 2013) I’ve seen the huge difference it can make in terms of children’s self-confidence and their ability to express themselves clearly and cogently in both oral and written exercises. And English, for better or worse, is the planet’s language.
Here is what I consider a simple but extraordinary observance I made while teaching in The Bahamas. Children in many public schools were excoriated by teachers for their perceived hard-headedness and poor writing skills. I myself bawled at them a few times. But I observed that many of them expressed themselves much better verbally; some with a confidence that seemed to border on arrogance. Years later, some whom I had taught became well-adjusted, articulate adults holding down relatively well-paying jobs. A few were jobless, but only one I recall became a drug addict, while another was fingered in a murder.
Then I began to notice that some very young children spoke and carried themselves with the kind of confidence and poise that was sadly lacking in most of the students I had taught back home, even the academically-gifted ones. I realized that years later this attitude came back to propel them into adulthood with less angst than many teachers would have anticipated.
Our Guyanese children are generally becoming more articulate and self-confident, and a number of young adults are blazing bold new paths across old stereotypical ruts. But there are still too many who feel marginalized in an education system that favours the resourceful rich. Life skills that begin to be taught and modeled from a child’s earliest years will surely help level the field. Nurture and steer them in that direction, beginning … hmm – like yesterday.

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