Destroying our children with an education overdose

Dec 08, 2018 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,

Anything too little or too much is unhealthy. Food is good, but if taken in excess quantities, will cause harm to our bodies. This principle can apply to many of our other types of behaviour which can be detrimental to our physical, emotional or mental wellbeing.
There is a growing problem in our educational system at present that is causing great harm to our young children in schools. I happened to regularly encounter primary school children and in the process took the opportunity to review their homework and regular classroom work. What I discovered really shocked me, to the extent that I had to pen this letter. In fact many other parents I had discussions with, share this same horrendous experience.
There are mountains of assignments and homework that seven-year-old children are flooded with, to the extent that another full school session starts at home. Even nursery school children are facing a barrage of home assignments that leaves them with little or no recreational time.
In employment language, we refer to this as doing a double shift, but as adults we don’t work double shift every day – these helpless little souls have been forced to.
These projects and assignments demand enormous amounts of energy and materials such as cardboard, paste, and a million other items. No wonder hundreds of stationery businesses have sprung up in the last decade to feast on struggling parents’ pockets. This is an unnecessary strain on the hard-earned income of parents.
When examined carefully, these assignments and projects mean little or nothing to the students, as it is so complicated and technical that only the parents can do it, and most parents themselves have to seek additional help. This insane culture forced most parents to return to another life at school, since over 95% of their children’s assignments and projects have to be completed by them.
So instead of parents utilizing their time in earning to maintain the family, they are pressured to do their children’s assignments. The only thing the children participate in is to carry the assignments to school. Worst yet are the many hundreds of persons who take advantage of the situation by making a business by renting or selling assignments. So the entire primary school is engulfed with a culture of utter madness where unnecessary time, energy and money have to be dedicated for no visible cause. In addition to that, I see some words that grade four children are forced to learn that even CXC students may struggle with. I am not against keeping a high standard, but you cannot put out a fire by dousing it with gasoline.
Even more shocking is the conspicuous silence on this matter by parents. Upon close study lies a grave and appalling reason for this horrible culture of silence. Competition is the main driving force responsible for this dreadful assignment culture. Over time, there developed a growing competitiveness among parents about whose children will perform better than the others. This fed into larger and larger competition groups with teachers versus teachers, class versus class, school vs. school, and top students of class, school, district and country all bulldozing their way for top positions.
So the entire schooling atmosphere was bent in this ominous direction, piling on the agony on those who could not keep pace. All the assignments and school programmes are designed to keep the top students in this competitive state to the detriment of those who cannot keep up. Hence, parents, businessmen, hired assignment assistants and others suddenly got involved.
The obvious victims of this rigorous competition are the children themselves who had no say but to endure a silent cry. They cannot protest and hold strike action like us in the workforce. Many of them are cast by the wayside wondering why the world is such a cruel and heartless place.
In fact, many of those students who are cast aside by this culture would have been in the top rankings had this been pre-2000 where one was able to grow their education at the appropriate age. The school system was more natural as one can catch up if left behind, unlike now where your fate is already decided in primary school.
There is no place for late bloomers anymore, as they are condemned to the understanding that education was not meant for them. I was not a dunce in primary school by any means, so I am aware of the misdirected position that now permeates our school system.
When one analyses why this haste and breakneck speed in our educational system, it boggles the mind, since a basic job still requires 5 CXC subjects while we are bursting our children’s brains to attain the title of country’s top student. Being top student is nothing in the world of careers and jobs, as the late bloomers take over at that stage in most instances.
I had the opportunity of supervising many school leavers at work and what I found was appalling. I noticed that the high flyers with 10 and 12 grade ones cannot perform like the students with 5 subjects. In fact the 5 subjects’ students were better in communications, had road sense and job output. Then I found out that certain schools do not cater for physical exercise, health education and sports, but lost their way only in the pages of books and screens of computers.
A survey also shows that 75% of our students migrate to other countries, so in any case we are not benefiting from the efforts we put in by blasting the brains out of our kids. Even after enduring the torturous life at school, jobs may be hard to find. This develops into mental breakdowns and depression of which in some cases suicide is the end result of our wild ambition.
I urge the Ministry of Education, teachers, parents and other responsible groups to examine this problem and redirect our children on the path to their rightful level of education.

Isabella Singh

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