‘Trouble ahead’

IF SYSTEMIC CHANGES do not occur in Barbados’ education system, the island is “heading for trouble”.Clinical psychologist and director of The Learning Place, Dr Kerry King, said there were too many intelligent young men in Barbados who could not read.“The children I see concern me and the angst they have is coming from the schools. There are too many angry and confused children out there,” she told the invited guests at a two-day Schools Positive Behaviour Project Training workshop yesterday at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre, Two Mile Hill, St Michael.The project, also known as Child Friendly Schools, is a global UNICEF initiative. The Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development has partnered with UNICEF to conduct training in Barbados.In an interview with the DAILY NATION during the break, King said it was the second year for the workshop, and another ten schools had been invited to participate, adding there was yet hope as there had been positive tangible results shown from last year.“All of the schools are reporting improvement in their environments in terms of discipline. We find some of the children are becoming problem solvers and are self-governing, which is our aim – to get them to internalise discipline; it can’t just be ‘teachers say’,” she added.King said Barbados’ social demographic had changed over the years so one of the objectives of the workshop was to get schools to reach out to their communities and include them in their programmes.As for the progress made this year so far, King said more support and less resistance were being seen now in contrast to last year, as people had initially thought the child-friendly schools philosophy was anti-corporal punishment and the facilitators had to spend time “eroding” that notion.In his feature address, Minister of Education Ronald Jones said any rights-based, child-friendly school had to reflect essential aspects such as being inclusive of children; effective for learning; gender sensitive; having a healthy, protective environment; and getting involved with the community.“Experience is now showing that a framework of rights-based schools can be a powerful tool for both helping to fulfil the rights of children and providing them with quality education.“It is believed that from this two-day workshop, all teachers involved in this project will acquire knowledge, develop abilities and understand concepts in a holistic manner,” he said. (CA)