For 52 of my 52 years on Earth, I have had been involved in the teaching profession, my grandfather was a teacher, my father was a teacher, my aunt was a teacher, my sister was a teacher, my wife teaches. I have taught for over 40 yrs, whether it was teaching my friends in my neighbourhood at the age of 12 some basic maths, to Form One to Form 5 students in my adult years as my contribution to their development.
Several years ago when Universal Secondary Education was introduced in Trinidad and Tobago, I recall a conversation with my sister in which she lamented the decision as she was experiencing the failure of the system in the school she taught. Successive Governments have attempted to bring reform in Trinidad and I believe that there is acknowledgment there, that errors were made.
In St Lucia we implemented Universal Secondary Education and we have covered our eyes seemingly afraid to acknowledge the failure of the experiment. It is time we open our eyes, face the reality and fix it. One characteristic that you develop as an engineer is the ability to quickly adjust. You can have all the plans for a project the night before, and when morning comes, you realize that the weather has changed, or a machine broke down, or an employee did not show up. The dexterity to adjust and create new plans for the day is what constitutes effective project management of a construction site. I would strongly suggest that every budding politician spend a year working in the construction industry to develop this most important trait.
There are students who have written Common Entrance Exams in St Lucia and have obtained zero in Maths and are placed in secondary schools to be taught Set Theory, Transformations, and Algebraic Functions. We want students who cannot read or even speak English to write essays for CXC in English Language. How did the framers of this policy expect this to work? The policy may have destroyed more lives than it helped, as these students have no choice but to become the “class disruptor’’ in an effort to mask his lack of understanding of his surroundings. Eventually they drop out of school and join the gangs.
I recently read a document developed by a special committee set up by the Ministry of Human Resource Development in India. They were mandated to review the implementation of the ‘Universalisation of Secondary Education’. This Committee made a very important point in the document, that the core matter is the relevance of education.
The Committee was of the view that no education today can be accepted as being relevant unless it (a) helps in unfolding the full potential of the child; and (b) plays the role of linking the development of the child with the society and its political, productive and socio-cultural dimensions.
Using that as a benchmark, we then have to ask ourselves as a nation whether that child who gets zero in Maths at Common Entrance and enters one of our secondary schools is being exposed to relevant education. Is the full potential of that child being unfolded in that school environment? Is the education presented to that child creating the linkages to the development of the child with the productive and socio-cultural dimensions of our society? The Ayes have it?
There is an excellent section of the document which says the following:
‘’Universalisation of secondary education cannot be envisaged merely in terms of quantitative expansion of what we have today. Universalisation calls for a paradigm shift founded on four guiding principles that involve reconceptualisation of access itself, socio-cultural ambience of the classroom, notion of knowledge, values and skills and the relationship between what is learnt inside the school and what is available outside. Without such a paradigm shift, the goal of Universalisation of Secondary Education is as likely to elude the policy makers’’
We have pursued quantitative expansion without any attempt to engage in that seismic shift of thought.
Some have said that we needed to start and then fix it, tweak it, reshape it as we go along. So if we stay in that metaphor, the car of universal education was started and the intent was to fix the car along the way, but the delay has been so long that we face a situation now where the engine is seized, the muffler has fallen off. Year after year we are still waxing and shining the Universal Secondary Education car that cannot move and which cannot carry our children to their destiny.
I would suggest that we look at the German Model for the reform of our secondary school. A German School complex has five different school types; some students stay for 3 yrs, some 4yrs, others up to 6yrs. There are vocational streams and academic streams depending on the student. They have apprenticeship attachment as part of the stay in school. The core is to provide relevant education.
If we have built the schools, employed the teachers, then let us ensure that the education is relevant. The present configuration of our Universal Secondary Education is a failed experiment.
Mr. Minister – Be bold, be strong, the Lord thy God is with you. LET US FIX IT!!