FIXING T&T - PART1

I was once told by a most respected Queen's Counsel (who is dead now, poor fellow) that if ever I wanted to solve a problem I should go back to the beginning. With this injunction in mind I started thinking about all of our little country's problems and what was the root cause of each and every one. Do they have anything in common?

The answer , I thought, is yes, and the problem lies in or with our (very faulty) education system.  I mean, we live in a topsy turvy world where our teachers are by and large underpaid and hardly respected (if at all). Our so-called prestige schools are little better than dumping grounds for our children with most classes having more than thirty kids each. How in the name of heaven do we expect to compete with the outside world where the best schools outside consider a 'large' class  having about sixteen kids? How do we expect a teacher to be able to control a class of about thirty thirteen or fourteen year olds? How do we expect to be able to produce well educated citizens for the future benefit of the country?

Of course, the problem here is that any plans that any Government might have is always dictated by a five year gap between elections and any real and proper changes to the system won't show any results for about twenty years. In other words, this idea of mine is definitely not a vote winner.

And yet, it is absolutely necessary. our teachers are at the bottom of the wage pyramid. They need to be properly compensated. We have a lot of very good teachers who are forced to supplement their incomes by giving private lessons. Yet an argument can be made that if they are so good why does a child need the extra lessons. And the answer is because the child needs that little extra attention. And so the circle begins again.

There is a saying about paying with peanuts and expecting to get a genius. Well, that is exactly what we are doing. And every single problem that we have can be traced back to our education system; even the corruption and inefficiencies are a result of the very poor education system.

Even the SEA system ought to be scrapped and replaced. ALL schools should have to meet a minimum standard (which ought to be very high) and instead of a child living in, say, Sangre Grande and having to travel everyday to Port of Spain to go to school, he/she ought to be able to go to the local secondary school and receive a good education. If a parent wants better then perhaps we can look at some sort of scholarship system wherein we can send our best and brightest.

Look, I am not saying that we don't have bright kids. We do. And they are bright enough to be able to compete with any first world child any time, any where. But our AVERAGE children are being horribly short changed by the system and we need to address this - NOW! And we can start by paying our teachers a proper salary. There is more on this which I will talk about later.