He who opens a school door, closes a prison. – Victor Hugo
The last sitting of the House of Assembly on January 25 saw the Government debating a supplementary for over $60 million for education at the University of the West Indies. The contribution of three members to the issue of expenditure on education caught my attention. As an educator of 38 years, I wish to use this week’s column to examine their submissions as “lessons from Parliament”.
I was not present to be able to mark them on preparation, lesson objectives, set induction, teaching experiences, use of teaching materials and their evaluation strategies; so I am forced to examine their lesson content as reported in the media.
Former Minister of Education Mia Mottley’s contribution was strikingly interesting.
The former Leader of the Opposition Barbados Labour Party (BLP)? is reported to have said that “the time has come for us to start to look at other measures . . . to better secure the investment we are making in tertiary education and minimize the extent to which our investment is used solely to build up other peoples’ countries”.
World is their oyster
In our schools we tell our students the world is their oyster. Without opportunities in the regional and international marketplace for many products of our colleges and universities we would suffer from educational “constipation”. Over the last three decades Barbadian scholars coming out of our university have been able to hold their own within the global environment.
To ask them to stay at home is to encourage a kind of “truancy” that would be equally detrimental to the same educational investment which we all agree that we must protect. We are now educating for a global environment.
Former Prime Minister Owen Arthur delivered the second lesson. Speaking as Leader of the Opposition, he warned the Government “not to touch the educational budget”.
Acknowledging the Government’s challenge in making economic decisions to deal with the unsustainable $538 million deficit on current account, he cautioned against any attempt to compromise our development prospects and noted that the deficit in education was only at the tertiary level.
Both Miss Mottley and Mr Arthur are rightly concerned about protecting our investment in education and this is to be lauded. The how is where the problem lies.
Minister of Education Ronald Jones taught the third lesson. It reminded me of one that I taught many years ago. His emphasis as reported was that much of what we are asking primary school students to learn, they do not need to know at that stage.
Is the minister suggesting that our curriculum is filled with irrelevancies? What are those things that he would cut out from our current primary curriculum?
So what do we have at the end of the day?
A current Minister of Education who is lamenting curriculum overcrowdedness; a former Minister of Education and Youth Affairs who is advocating the retention of our graduates; and a former Prime Minister who advocates guarding the standard of living to which our citizens have become accustomed.
Educational constipation
For now abideth retention, overcrowded curricula and a preoccupation with guarding our investment. The triple impact of these issues on the system is a kind of educational constipation whose release must be carefully studied and controlled.
The overall debate was well placed and begs for further analysis.
• Matthew D. Farley is a secondary school principal, chairman of the National Forum On Education, and a social commentator.
