Fixing problems in education

SAFFIYA KHAN

EVERYBODY, it seems, has a solution to what they perceive to be wrong with the education system. It is obvious that the majority of those who pontificate have taken no time to find out what is really going on in that huge bureaucratic organisation. If they did, they would realise that a large part of their solutions is already in place in the schools throughout the nation.

There are hundreds of schools catering to thousands of students. It is not like hospitals, or community centres, or water reservoirs. Apart from that, schools reflect what is going on in the society. Everything that happens in the homes will happen in the school. If there is bullying in the home, the product of that environment will take that learned behaviour to the school where the victims are many.

Social media, now part and parcel of our society, is encouraging and facilitating a behaviour which was alien a few decades ago when our generation and the generation of the educators went to school. That young woman who took a brick to the teacher’s car did that because she knew she would become a star, though fleeting, to her schoolmates and to the wider world.

There are very few rules and regulations, if any, which can contain that behaviour. The technology allows for a student’s contact lens, or a hair ornament, to photograph what is going on and post it to the world.

Be that as it may, the analysts and advisers should do their research before they do their pontification. Apart from the many contradictions in their analyses of the situation, many of the solutions they offer are built on almost non-existent situations or are already in place in the schools.

For example, one analyst built a large part of his article describing signs and symptoms and criticising the inadequacy of the “few” sessions that the guidance officer may give to a child with RAD (reactive attachment disorder), a condition that is quite rare.

Then there are those whose advice is to institute exactly what the Ministry of Education has instituted, some three or four years ago. For heaven’s sake, if you want to pontificate and impress the population with your vast knowledge, or the number of letters either before or after your name, at least do your research first.

On the other hand, the ministry has always had concrete and holistic plans to handle situations of indiscipline and violence in schools, as it has one now to deal the recent upsurge in violence observed in some schools.

The Minister of Education is to be applauded for the firm and swift manner in which he has moved to ensure schools remain safe places for those who continue to use them the way they were intended to be used.

At the same time he is ensuring that the educational needs of the troublemakers are met. A military-oriented programme is a brilliant idea to assist these children in taking control of their lives before it is too late for them and others.

The laws of TT also have to be amended to either wake up that sleeping and possibly archaic Teaching Service Commission, or remove the appointment of principals from its purview. In many of the schools where there are serious breaches of good discipline, the principal will be found wanting – either too weak to assert his authority or just biding his/her time to retirement.

The better people who can handle the schools are simply bypassed in favour of those who have a few months of service remaining, even though they are tired, incapable and almost ready to leave the service. Something has to be done; something as simple as buying out their remaining time in the interest of good and dynamic service to our children.

Kudos to the Minister of Education and his team. Keep up the good work. Ignore the pontificators.

Saffiya Khan is a retired educator

Comments

"Fixing problems in education"

More in this section