WHAT A TEACHER WRITES on the blackboard of life can never be erased.
That comment was posted by an obviously concerned parent on the social network Facebook last week.
It was an opportune one not only because it was posted in the midst of the current impasse between the Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union and principal of the Alexandra School, Jeff Broomes, but also because it crystallized how the controversy has the potential to harm Barbados’ education system for years to come.
Children go to school primarily to do one thing: learn.
If instead of being educated they are in classrooms playing Animal, Person, Place and Thing whilst 30 upset teachers and a principal can’t be on the same page, our education system, simply put, has failed.
The initial silence of the Ministry of Education – and, by extension, Minister of Education Ronald Jones – is even more alarming.
Jones, a former teacher himself, surely understands what harm can be done if students are in a classroom with their heads on their desks, napping before lunch because there are no teachers around.
The controversy has made who is right or wrong a moot point, and parent Nevada Phillips, who told THE NATION newspaper that only the children can suffer from the situation, was right on the money.
The fact that every child in Barbados earns an education free of cost does not mean that right should be burdened by an ego contest between Jeff Broomes and the Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union.
If Broomes and the BSTU can’t solve the problem between themselves, then, for the sake of the more than 700 children who travel to Speightstown every day, the Ministry of Education should settle the dispute once and for all.
Government, having gone through the financial pains of spending millions of dollars per year to keep schools open and running, should not sit idly by and let students leave home to sit down in empty classrooms.
Some may say the industrial action by the BSTU came early in the school term and may not affect the long-term performance of students, but since each child improves and performs at a specific rate, every minute lost to a teacherless classroom is a minute too much.
The children of Alexandra deserve better. The parents of the children of Barbados deserve better.
It makes no sense for Barbadian education officials to boast of the standard in this country being way above other islands in the Eastern Caribbean, then to have such a controversy put children’s future at risk.
Parents in Barbados who attend form meetings to gauge the performance of their children are constantly told how important it is for them to be responsible and check to make sure homework is done, book reports are completed, and children adhere to school rules. Generally, Barbadian parents get the job done.
It’s time for the Ministry of Education to do the responsible thing, and settle the dispute at the Alexandra School. It’s time for the teachers to get their job done.
