Education system – our number one problem

DR EVEROLD HOSEIN

ON MARCH 21, the PNM/UNC government once more got away with inflicting psychological abuse on about 20,000 children as they were dragged into the trauma of SEA. And not a public word of protest by parents. Or even our “watchdog” media.

A body found in the yard of a Valsayn family sucked the air out of the pressroom. As a former journalism teacher, I did have to ask myself the rhetorical question: What sells more papers? SEA trauma or a dead body? (Just a small dig at our media institutions.)

If Jesus were to see the faces of our ten- and 11-year-old children about to suffer the psychological horror of SEA, he would have protested.

He would have said, “Bring the children unto me,” and would have spent the day regaling them with parables. What a great way to teach. What a great way to learn. Instead, what we have is a PNM/UNC government abiding by this perverse abuse of about 20,000 of our youngest children who have no power to protest.

Few see SEA as causing serious psychological harm. And this harm will manifest itself years later. We go along. One is alarmed by the social inertia, by the apathy of our people. Why is this trauma not front page news? But crime is.

Crime is not our number one issue. Our poor education system is. An education system which focuses on the academic skills of a few rather than character development of all is awfully deficient. And SEA highlights this deficiency.

SEA day is criminal creation day – this is when our next generation of criminals are formed. Look out for them four years from now. Perhaps three years. And their numbers will be in the thousands. The gangs are waiting to recruit them.

Most parents and caregivers seem to acknowledge the psychological damage done to our little children with this SEA process. But they feel powerless. And we inflict this process on 20,000 children so that a few (about 2,000) can have their choice of a fancy school. But why pummel 20,000 children for the benefit of 2,000? Can’t figure that out.

And we persist with the mistaken belief that if one’s child gets to the fancy school, that child will get an education.

The fancy schools may be fine at fostering academic skills, but at the expense of character development. Getting high scores on academic tests does not equate with getting a good education.

Every year we gloat about the high scorers in the CXC results and totally ignore the 18,000 children left behind in whatever school they were assigned to, where they get some kind of “child care” but not a quality education. For those 18,000, the focus is still the test, not character.

Our education system ignores the central mission of education: to develop a people of good character. And when we fail to do this, then we live with and moan about the criminal class we create.

Almost 40 per cent of children “fail” SEA. But they are assigned anyway to some secondary school somewhere in a mysterious process used by the education authorities. In fact, even when you pass but not high enough to get your choice of “elite, prestige, fancy” school, you are basically treated as having failed and get assigned to a school anyway through the mystery process.

If this is going to happen, anyway, and this happens to about 18,000 children, 90 per cent of those who take SEA, why bother with the psychological damage and trauma of taking SEA? Parents should just skip it and wait to find out where their child is being sent. At least we save our children from the abuse of SEA.

Skip SEA and let’s start building a new education structure, along the lines of the GPTT (Green Party of TT) education transformation agenda (see our website), in which we have equal access to a quality education for all focusing sharply on character development and not academic and testing skills. Let’s get the help of Finland on this.

We need to build 200 new schools in four years for all our children nine months to 16 years of age with wonderful facilities, rigorously re-select teachers, replace some teachers with new committed ones, retrain teachers to teach for character development and not to “teach to the test,” double their salaries, and have a new curriculum focused on character development and not academic testing.

If we want to transform TT, we need a radical transformation of our education system. The British system no longer works. We repeat: Why pummel 20,000 children for the benefit of 2,000. Crime is not our number one problem. Our education system is. It is where we now harbor our future criminals.

Dr. Everold Hosein is the political leader of the Green Party