GUYANA | Adam's Notebook: Wither the PPP/C gov't amidst serious challenges?

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, May 24, 2024 - Another round of talks between the Education Ministry and the Guyana Teachers’ Union has borne no fruit. The GTU said that it was prepared to and even made a compromise to its original position. The Ministry held firm to its position.

Instead, for the first time in the history of Guyana there will be no end of year examinations. What this means is that every child will be promoted to a higher class whether he or she could read or write at the desired level.

Further, this will compound the idiotic decision that no child will be left behind. That policy saw children declining to learn knowing that he or she would be promoted. Years later, the Education Ministry began to talk about remedial learning.

That was only the first plan to compound the idiotic ‘no child left behind’ programme. In Linden when one head teacher insisted on promoting children according to their quality of learning, he was summoned to Georgetown.

The Ministry insisted that he promote the children and he continued to refuse. In the end they decided to remove him, to the detriment of the school. So it was that teachers began to pay less attention to success in the classroom. Then children began taking drugs to school for sale.

There was the plan to recruit retired teachers. This meant that the Ministry was prepared to spend money to pay additional teachers while the regular teachers would not be given an increase.

The reality was that while some of the retired teachers stuck to their task, there were those who confronted children that were not prepared to even attempt to learn. These children were happy to remain in their dark world of ignorance.

And parents who were only keen to get the child out of the house paid little attention to what the child did in school. The society began to criticize the ‘no child left behind’ programme but the Ministry without saying a word in public, let the teachers know that the policy still stood.

It wasn’t long before more and more private schools sprang up. The children with a bit of learning helped themselves to a bit more and so developed some reasoning skills. But there were others who entered the real world satisfied with pursuing menial jobs to earn a few dollars. They are in no position to compete in the real world.

They can be seen along roadways with spades shoveling and loading bags with sand that had accumulated at the road edge. These are very temporary jobs so one wonders at the seriousness of the Education Ministry.

There was a time when girls who left school without the requisite academic qualifications were sent to technical schools. They went to home economics schools, typing schools and sewing classes.

Many secured a place in the world of work as chefs, seamstresses, and clerks.

There are those girls who decide to enter the world of skills so today one is seeing women in the construction industry working alongside the men. Not many, but some are operating heavy duty equipment.

There are the others who decide that a life of crime is the next best way to earn a living. In fact, that was not a decision. Some were recruited by the criminal underworld. Others simply formed gangs having sat at the street corners to chat from early morning until dark.

Just recently, three men decided to relieve a man of his motorcycle. One was fourteen, another, fifteen and the third, nineteen. Just look at the police press reports and the evidence of youthful criminals emerges.

When the GTU returned to strike action, the Education Ministry began to talk about the extent of learning loss. The Minister said that two years were lost to COVID and that the country had not recovered. Now there is more loss.

If this is the reality and if the government has the interest of the future of the country at heart, then it could have at least made a move to satisfy the teachers. I am willing to bet that the spate of road accidents and fatalities, murders and other violent crimes would be linked to the education system.

There is the belief that there is discrimination in the world of work. There are large trucks on the roads and one can see who the young drivers are. One can also see who are the men working on the road contracts. In fact, even in that area there are fewer vacancies because the Venezuelans are grabbing those jobs because they are accepting a lower pay.

Earlier this week, a man in a rural community walked on what was supposed to be a just completed roadway. He simply bent and picked up the asphalt layer that was supposed to be the road surface.

He claimed that the contractor was not qualified, that he had to pay so much money as inducements for the job, consider his profit, then use what was left to do the road.

There must be a question about the engineer who passed the job. Then check the so-called contractor’s staff and measure their academic background.

Each year, the government gets billions of dollars from the oil fund. Where this money is going is anybody’s guess. The nation knows where poverty is heading as it does about the cost of living.

The nation also knows that the money is not going to education in the same way that it knows that the consequences would be dire.

Meanwhile, yesterday marked the first anniversary of the fire that destroyed the dormitory at Mahdia.  That fire claimed twenty young lives. Nothing has been said since.

A young child was charged with twenty counts of murder but the nation is unaware of any move to trial. The silence on this matter is deafening.

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