GUYANA | Adam’s Notebook :Our Schools are Failing Says Adam Harris

GEORGETOWN, August 29, 2024 - In the wake of the release of the results for the Caribbean Secondary Examinations Council, just about every region has been complaining about the pass rate. The analysis reveals that two out of every three pupils fail English and mathematics.

Recently I suggested that English is a foreign language to our students. This is because in schools there is no insistence that our children speak properly in school. This was a must when most of us went to school.

One dared not speak to teachers in the vernacular. There is the saying that practice makes perfect. The teachers themselves did not speak anything but English in the presence of pupils and students.

There were also book corners in many schools, including primary schools. Libraries were very prominent. Each child was encouraged to join a library. The books covered a variety of topics. However, the books that grabbed the most attention were the works of fiction.

The older teachers would tell tales of walking around the classrooms and catching pupils with books hidden in textbooks.  The children were reading other material in class because the books were interesting, perhaps more interesting than what was happening in the class.

Some of the books were taken away because the teachers wanted to read them. Pubescent girls were drawn to Nancy Drew and the likes. Boys of the same age were drawn to Hardy Boys. Of course there were other writers who appealed to the young.

When I interviewed potential reporters I always asked them to tell me about the last book they read. If they were University students most of them would tell me about some text book. If the books were not compulsory reading, then they would not have been read.

Indeed, there was no television back in the day. To compound the issue today, there are cell phones. Books are not even on the horizon.

Some friends of mine informed me that many Guyanese on entering Universities overseas are forced to take a course in remedial English. That was unheard of at one time. If fact, many of us handled the language better than the natives.

It hurts when one sees that people cannot differentiate between there and their. Today I see notes in which there are the abbreviations one sees in some text messages. You is simply U. One abbreviation over which I struggled was IMO. I had to be told that it means In My Opinion.

I would not be surprised if these abbreviations appeared in answers to questions at the external examinations.

Mathematics is another problem area. How can people expect to survive in this world without being able to count money? Indeed, Mathematics is more than counting money. It exists in every aspect of life.

Some years ago I was told the story of a young carpenter who was asked to cut an eighteen-inch length of wood. Having cut the wood, he picked up both pieces then asked his supervisor which of the eighteen- inch pieces he wanted.

No wonder we are seeing roads that deteriorate almost as soon as they are constructed. The contractors cannot calculate the mixture. It is scary that we have people working on some high level bridges. Such constructions involve a lot of mathematics. Lives could be at stake.

It is not by accident that there have been buildings in the process of being constructed actually having sections collapse. The talk is about poor construction but if the contractor is a stranger to calculations then such results should be expected.

Guyana is now condemned to recruiting foreign contractors. These foreign contractors, at the rate things are going, would only use the local people as labourers.

Perhaps when the Marriott was being built the Chinese recognized that it would have been better for them to work alone on the project. I was annoyed but with the passage of time and with being aware of our Mathematical prowess I really shouldn’t cuss them.

It is not difficult to see when the decline in Maths and English began. The decline coincided with the exodus of our teachers. The national leaders began to talk about training more teachers, with no consideration of the pool from which the recruits would be drawn. Out of nothing comes nothing.

The trend is also present in the nursing profession. Nurses are being accused of failing to understand prescriptions. Dispensing medications must be akin to pulling teeth if they can’t read the instructions. I hope they know the difference between four milliliters and four litres.

There was a building erected along Mandela Avenue in the vicinity of Norton Street, Lodge. It was a tall building and before it could have been completed it leaned precariously. Someone failed to calculate, accurately, the load on the foundation.

It is no different with the roads. I wonder if the contractors can say with certainty that the road surface is designed to take a certain load. But the government is pouring money into road construction.

An article in a Trinidad newspaper, Newsday, commenting on the recent CXC examination results stated, ‘CXC CEO/registrar Dr Wayne Wesley gave figures to show in the region, 94 per cent of pupils failed to get five subjects or more, a feat achieved by only six per cent. Fewer than one in 20 pupils got five passes inclusive of English and maths.’

He lamented that since 2018 each year, some 11,500 pupils did not fully matriculate and so would end up unemployed or under-employed.

Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo knew what was happening. He said that Guyana would have to import skills.