A school for Mr Biswas

THE EDITOR: More than 100 years ago, Mohun Biswas, VS Naipaul's finest creation, learned, as we all recall, that "ought oughts are ought, ought twos are ought."

He learned some other things too while attending the Canadian Mission School with the teacher, Lal, who "believed in thoroughness." English poetry was memorised and there was geography. Most of us can easily visualise that school. If, however, Naipaul's words somehow fail you, do not despair. Just such a school survives today and functions (possibly as it did so many years ago for Mr Biswas and Lal).

In the hills above Scarborough survives the Patience Hill Government Primary School. Mohun Biswas and Lal might walk out of it this afternoon.

It is 2024 for everyone – not just the people dressing up as grown-ups, receiving pay cheques from a government. But the darling children attending the PHGPS do so without the benefit of any interior walls.

It is, in result, a one-room school house. Abraham Lincoln could attend it alongside Mr Biswas if we only have A Wrinkle In Time.

Tobago House of Assembly (THA) Secretary for Education Zorisha Hackett may be agreeing in executive meetings with Farley Augustine and Trevor James that THA money will be best spent on the Store Bay beach facilities. We don't know.

She will be failing the children and families who depend on her for a modern education, though, if she does not ensure that scarce funds go first toward correcting the deficiencies of the PHGPS. Children spending six hours a day, five days a week there in the present circumstances might just as well spend their time in the Scarborough market as the levels of peace and learning are comparable.

While Hackett is organising the renovations at the PHGPS, the Patience Hill community (where two of Tobago's 21 murders have taken place this year), she can simultaneously correct the erroneous view held by many teachers in Tobago that it is acceptable for them to be absent each week from their classes.

No suggestions about how she might correct this wrong, but she needs to take some action. The very first week of school saw the absenteeism spread like sewage, with classes of unsupervised children every day and in every academic topic.

If Hackett were in contact with the PTAs of the schools in Tobago she would undoubtedly hear their complaints about teacher absenteeism. Invite them to your office, Hackett, listen to them and make this world a better place for the children and their disappointed families. You can do that.

A BLADE

Mason Hall