Sat Ma­haraj

Part Two

Dis­cus­sion, de­bate and di­a­logue must con­tin­ue in the short term and re­sult in a pos­i­tive ex­ten­sion of the school year, for the ben­e­fit of all our chil­dren and the na­tion.Pre­lim­i­nary op­po­si­tion to this no­tion has al­ready demon­strat­ed that it (op­po­si­tion) is not based on any sound ed­u­ca­tion prin­ci­ples, but more on per­ceived self-in­ter­est. T&T has to be care­ful at this con­trol junc­ture in our his­to­ry and de­vel­op­ment as a na­tion.

Na­tion build­ing of hu­man and in­tel­lec­tu­al cap­i­tal can­not seek fool­ish com­fort by com­par­ing our­selves with the rest of the Caribbean or Latin Amer­i­ca. Even though we are usu­al­ly placed in such a group­ing, there are very sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences be­tween T&T and the oth­er coun­tries.The de­prived eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances of most of the coun­tries re­sult in sev­er­al de­fi­cien­cies in their ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems which are dif­fi­cult to rem­e­dy.

De­pressed wages, poor in­fra­struc­ture, lim­it­ed school places and sev­er­al oth­er fac­tors place them in a dif­fi­cult po­si­tion.We must look care­ful­ly at the lead­ers in ed­u­ca­tion, es­pe­cial­ly the Far East coun­tries, and the struc­ture of their aca­d­e­m­ic years. The aca­d­e­m­ic year that we have in­her­it­ed from the colo­nial pe­ri­od has nev­er been prop­er­ly eval­u­at­ed for val­ue and im­pact.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers