Sat Ma­haraj

Part 2

Last week's col­umn be­gan an analy­sis of an un­in­formed let­ter head­ed "A state of emer­gency in ed­u­ca­tion" by Steven King and point­ed out the lack of mer­it in what he wrote with re­spect to ac­tions by de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards. I as­sert­ed the boards' firm­ness in tak­ing charge of their schools from mis­guid­ed in­di­vid­u­als who be­lieve they are not ac­count­able to the very boards who rec­om­mend their ap­point­ment in the first in­stance.

Some of these in­di­vid­u­als pre-sent them­selves as vic­tims in the me­dia with the hope of evok­ing pity and sym­pa­thy to cam­ou­flage their ac­tions, but the boards will have none of this. I must cor­rect oth­er in­ac­cu­ra­cies by Mr King be­fore deal­ing with TTUTA. Mr King won­ders "whether or not the abil­i­ty to grant ac­cess to sta­tus and priv­i­lege via the 20 per cent af­ford­ed to de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools does not erode the dis­tinc­tions nec­es­sary for an in­de­pen­dent func­tion­ing Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and tru­ly 'pub­lic,' 'de­mo­c­ra­t­ic' and 'just' ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem by cre­at­ing a sense of oblig­a­tion and favour, if not out­right en­ti­tle­ment, among some pow­er­ful­ly placed, but per­haps in­se­cure elites?" (Ex­press 12/01/12).

This is an amaz­ing myth per­pe­trat­ed by some­one pur­su­ing a PhD in ed­u­ca­tion. This blind re­fusal to ac­knowl­edge the boards' his­tor­i­cal role and in­valu­able con­tri­bu­tion to ed­u­ca­tion is over­looked for his wish for a tru­ly "pub­lic" ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem; a dys­func­tion­al sys­tem that leads most par­ents to en­rol their chil­dren in board schools. The ev­i­dence is avail­able that the 20 per cent to boards are not on­ly those with wealth and in­flu­ence, as Mr King seems to think, but rather from the poor but loy­al and de­vot­ed mem­bers of the re­spec­tive faiths who over decades have do­nat­ed land and fi­nan­cial sup­port to boards for con­struc­tion of schools in ne­glect­ed ar­eas of T&T.

In fact, many from the 20 per cent gained their places on mer­it in ad­di­tion to hav­ing the board school as a first choice. The boards' right to main­tain their faiths through this as­pect of se­lec­tion can­not be glibly wished or tak­en away by any whim or fan­cy. It is now en­trenched in law by Jus­tice Ven­tour (cv2009-01445) who ruled: "It has been demon­strat­ed that the as­sist­ed schools are the prop­er­ty of the re­spec­tive de­nom­i­na­tion­al bod­ies. These bod­ies have a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed right to the en­joy­ment of their prop­er­ty."

Mr King must go fur­ther if he wants to at­tack this right of boards. He must al­so rec­om­mend that prin­ci­pals of all gov­ern­ment schools, both pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary, be stripped of their rights. They must make pub­lic the trans­par­ent and ac­count­able process they used to se­lect stu­dents in­to Year 1, as well as the same process they used to re­ceive stu­dents on trans­fers from oth­er schools. Let them ex­pose their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process for pub­lic scruti­ny.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, prin­ci­pals of sec­ondary schools must make pub­lic the list of stu­dents they re­cov­ered on trans­fers from oth­er schools, as well as their process for ac­cept­ing stu­dents to Form Six. Let the pub­lic al­so scru­ti­nise the "mer­its" of these schools. The cri­sis that Mr King writes about is not about "fail­ing to pro­tect these women from the in­jus­tices that are met­ed out to them." It is about em­ploy­ees who are will­ing­ly de­stroy­ing the ed­u­ca­tion fu­ture of cit­i­zens.

The role of TTUTA in this "cri­sis" al­so needs to be ex­am­ined. This self-pro­claimed pro­fes­sion­al trade union is a per­pet­u­al hum­bug on the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. TTUTA is ful­ly re­spon­si­ble for a great deal of the malaise, in­ef­fec­tive­ness and in­ef­fi­cien­cy of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and past gov­ern­ments have al­lowed it to cre­ate chaos in some schools. This union is sup­posed to cham­pi­on not on­ly terms and con­di­tions of work, but al­so pro­fes­sion­al en­hance­ment of its mem­bers. What do the union lead­ers do? Noth­ing. All their en­er­gies are spent in un­der­min­ing the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem by de­fend­ing non-per­form­ing teach­ers rather than sup­port­ing the vast ma­jor­i­ty of teach­ers who make the na­tion proud.

I re­al­ly hope that the present Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion will reign in these trade union­ists. TTUTA has demon­strat­ed over the years it's lack of in­ter­est in im­prov­ing the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. Its sin­gu­lar in­ter­est is in pro­tect­ing bad teach­ers (which in­clude ad­min­is­tra­tors) at the ex­pense of stu­dents' ed­u­ca­tion. In the Tu­na­puna Hin­du School mat­ter, this bunch of trade union­ists has been a bun­dle of con­tra­dic­tions-sign­ing an agree­ment one day and un­der­min­ing it them­selves an­oth­er day. In next week's col­umn I will con­tin­ue to ex­am­ine the de­struc­tive role of TTUTA in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

TTUTA's pol­i­cy of giv­ing as­sis­tance or jus­ti­fy­ing late-com­ing and ab­sen­teeism is well known. The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has to es­tab­lish penal­ties for in­frac­tions in these ar­eas. Even in mat­ters of the law, TTUTA has lit­tle or no un­der­stand­ing. Jus­tice Ven­tour's re­cent rul­ing is clear to every­one ex­cept Ron­ston Job. As pres­i­dent of TTUTA, Job showed a com­plete lack of un­der­stand­ing not on­ly of Jus­tice Ven­tour's rul­ing, but al­so of the op­er­a­tional con­duct of boards. He demon­strat­ed a fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing of the things that con­sti­tute the boards' prop­er­ty. He is prob­a­bly the on­ly per­son who be­lieves that on­ly the build­ings, and not the var­i­ous re­sources, be­long to the board.

• Sat­narayan Ma­haraj is the sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha