Activists: Schools fail today’s youth

THE school system is failing our youngsters and must be revamped, urged activists on Wednesday at Woodford Square, Port of Spain at a gathering to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1970 Black Power marches.

Poet Eintou Springer declared, “We need to pay attention to the education of our children. They are not doing well.”

Psyche Haynes of the Fyzabad Connection Theatre Company told Newsday youngsters must be able to know who they are or else they will gravitate towards any of the myriad images offered up by various media.

Emancipation Support Committee head Khafra Kambon said troubled youngsters today are largely simply reacting to a society that demeans them, as he noted geographical prejudice against areas like the Beetham Estate. “What brings discipline is a sense of purpose, when people know what they are about and what they want to achieve.” Alluding that youngsters were quite socially active/engaged 50 years ago, Kambon said, “1970 was one of the most crime-free years in the history of TT.”

UWI Prof Emeritus Winston Suite urged marginalised African youths to stop fighting each other and instead come together to publicly call for the distribution of plots of land to them. “The absence of land for young black men is the main reason they are killing one another.”

Activist Kwame Kamau lamented that too many African pupils score 0-30 per cent in school exams, while families now largely have only a mother or a father.

Former labour leader Clive Nunez said over the decades he had told three education ministers their legacy should be the reform of the education system. Caribbean pupils, for example, must learn why Haiti is now a poor country despite rebel slaves beating the French army, as it was forced to pay plantation owners recompense for loss of slaves.

Former counsellor Joseanne Lennard said it is now time to bring children into the confidence of who they are as Caribbean people. While everyone fears for their safety, no-one is addressing the root causes of crime, she said, recalling the low crime rates in the 1970s when youths were kept engaged in social conversations.

“This begs the question of our education system. University was a place of thinking, critiquing and of being relevant to the society.”

Recalling harsh comments made about youth on Ariapita Avenue, Port of Spain on Carnival Tuesday night facing the police, she said much work must be done to close a social chasm that has grown since 1970 rather than close.

“If I have to champion something it has to be about transforming the education system,” Lennard said.

“The rate at which information and misinformation is coming at us as a Caribbean society, we have to push back and have that confidence.

“We are not connecting with our people. It is as if people are self-censoring themselves – because they want that job – and all around the social fabric is imploding.”

She said the Concordat – that sets standards in State and denominational schools – is not working. “We must fix our education system. The institutions inherited from the colonial masters has been changed in the places where they come from.”