Mia gets it, Anthony

IF we need any confirmation of the failure of the education system to produce thinkers, we need look no further than the Minister of Education, Anthony Garcia.

Primary schools are hotbeds of competition and frenzied drilling that benefit only the teachers who charge large sums of untaxed dollars to give lessons. What is the goal of a primary school? Secondary Entrance Assessment examination passes. What do we know about the SEA even in its previous form as the Common Entrance exam?

We know that it fails our children.

It fails to provide a nurturing learning environment. It fails to allow them to enjoy the few freedoms of childhood. It robs them of self-esteem. It forces them into a life-changing position in their prepubescent years. It is one thing for the minister to have said that the Ministry of Education has yet to find a way to scrap this blot on our nation's history; but he has actually come up with flimsy, dangerous and possibly unconstitutional rationales to defend the continuance of this charade.

At his press conference two weeks ago, the minister acknowledged that his Ministry has been unsuccessfully looking for ways to replace the system for years.

Many reports and recommendations have been done by The UWI and others in the field of education; many international models existthe Permanent Secretary, Lenor Baptiste-Simmons, praised Finland's; the Chief Education Officer, Harrilal Seecharan, spoke about high costs of managing ongoing assessments; the Barbados Prime Minister, Mia Mottley, announced that her country was grinding it back into the colonial dust.

Rather than admit that he does not have the political will for reform, Mr Garcia went down a blustery road that was as vague as it was irrelevant. True, it is nigh impossible to predict what the futures hold given the speed of change; but even the most conservative must acknowledge that old methods of teaching cannot continue because they are hopelessly unsuited for these times.

Mr Garcia seemed a bit huffy when he was asked to comment on the Barbados declaration. The Newsday quoted him as saying, 'That is Barbados. In T&T we are guided by certain things. As you know, we run a dual system of education, in which the church plays an important part. We have government schools and government-assisted schools. We have to recognise the contribution the churches have made towards education and we just can't discard with that.'

An Express editorial called on the minister to provide details of support for the system and clarity about the methodologies used to collect data. 'If, in the face of widespread criticism and public complaints about the exam, he insists that the ministry is acting on the basis if stakeholder support for the exam, then the least he should do is provide the evidence. Who are these stakeholders?' The editorial chided: 'It is not enough to say that 92.4 per cent of the pupils and 65 per cent of parents agree with the SEA model.' I simply cannot get past the idea that these little children were asked.

What might be garnered from reading various newspaper reports of his press conference (the Ministry of Education's website has nothing on this; their last news item was from November 2019) is that the minister was making a great deal of the need to respect the rights of the church in the retention of this blessed system.

'We have been looking at this for some time now and we are yet to come up with a formula that would allow the transition of students from primary school to secondary school without having any problem with respect to the church, and also with respect to the rights of the parents to choose.' He is quoted as speaking of the legal implications 'with respect to the rights of the church,' and if I understand this right from the rather unclear quote; that they (the church-run, government- assisted schools) select 'students to ensure that the religious character of the school is maintained.'

It seems that the minister is more concerned with preserving the stakeholders in the 60-year-old Concordat than he is with the current crisis in education and the damage being done to our children.

If he makes one reference to the nature of the examination itself, it is so outlandish and manifestly untrue that it can only be classified as a political statement.

'It is important for all of us to understand that this exam will focus to a large extent on creative writing, critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Last year there was a general furore by some parents because it was reported that some of the children were not able to deal with some of the questions that they were asked to write. Remember that the curriculum at the primary level has been so designed to ensure that our students engage in critical thinking and problem solving not only regurgitation.'

Let me regurgitate something that has been said so many times that even the minister must have heard it. The SEA exam is a purely administrative exercise determining where to send children. It has no educational value, and in fact does much to damage the process of learning. The Ministry of Education is responsible for restructuring the system. Given the length of time that this has been the obvious way forward, there can be no more hiding under the petticoats of religion. This is a secular country.

If you need to hear it in terms you can understand, let me put it this way; I will not vote for any government that continues to injure our children through SEA.

- vaneisabaksh@gmail.com THE AUTHOR is also an editor and a cricket historian

aksh