Paula Lu­cie-Smith

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Last week, the se­ries In­jus­tice in Ed­u­ca­tion be­gan with a look at Al­ta and the Fin­land ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem mod­el. Part Two takes a clos­er look at T&T schools. Com­pared with Fin­land's cul­ture of co-op­er­a­tive teach­ing and learn­ing, here the teacher works alone all day, every day. Iso­la­tion is the en­e­my of im­prove­ment and in­no­va­tion.

Un­like Fin­land, where there was pol­i­cy con­ti­nu­ity for more than 40 years and ed­u­ca­tors made the de­ci­sions, here cur­ricu­lum and pol­i­cy change at the whim of the politi­cians in pow­er. Schools have been a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball–key de­ci­sions tak­en to win votes at elec­tions. It was at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing that Bas­deo Pan­day an­nounced uni­ver­sal sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion and the abo­li­tion of the Com­mon En­trance Ex­am–a dis­as­trous de­ci­sion that placed hun­dreds of non-read­ers in sec­ondary schools. Stu­dents who had not mas­tered the pri­ma­ry cur­ricu­lum were ex­pect­ed to do a sec­ondary cur­ricu­lum.

In the 13 years since, non-read­ers con­tin­ue to move from pri­ma­ry to sec­ondary schools, where they are pro­mot­ed every year and then out af­ter Form Five–if they en­dure the hu­mil­i­a­tion that long. Al­ta has de­signed a foun­da­tion pre-Form One year where half the timetable is de­vot­ed to lit­er­a­cy. A log­i­cal step con­sid­er­ing they spend five years hav­ing to read and write. Our pro­pos­al is lan­guish­ing some­where in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. Al­ta may meet these "grad­u­ates" in their 30s or 40s if they ever come to Al­ta.

While Fin­land and Al­ta have no for­mal tests, stu­dents here have lots of tests with the king of all tests at age 11, the SEA–the "abol­ished" Com­mon En­trance re-brand­ed. The added na­tion­al tests de­signed to eval­u­ate how schools are per­form­ing have be­come an­oth­er rea­son for af­ter-school lessons in big groups. The same in­struc­tions that missed the mark dur­ing the hours when the stu­dents were not tired, hot and hun­gry are re­peat­ed. No con­tin­u­ous as­sess­ment.

Since all chil­dren have to com­pete for a few places in "good" schools, the school sys­tem en­gen­ders a cul­ture of ex­treme com­pe­ti­tion, fol­lowed by re­sis­tance from those who fail ear­ly on. A vis­it to most sec­ondary schools is a les­son in Gand­hi­an non-co­op­er­a­tion, eg bell rings at 8 am, no one even be­gins to move to­wards a class­room un­til at least five min­utes lat­er. Then there is the vi­o­lence. In part this is an ex­pres­sion of the non-read­ers' ex­treme frus­tra­tion and sense of fu­til­i­ty, as they are bom­bard­ed by print at every turn.

It is worth not­ing that the TT school sys­tem does serve those who have an ap­ti­tude for lit­er­a­cy, and it serves them well. Tes­ti­mo­ny to this is the ac­co­lades many of our grad­u­ates re­ceive when they go to study abroad. At the top lev­el, we can com­pete in the in­ter­na­tion­al are­na. This is be­cause SEA se­lects all with ex­cel­lent lit­er­a­cy skills and groups them to­geth­er in the schools with strong tra­di­tions and a his­to­ry of aca­d­e­m­ic ex­cel­lence. Once in this com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment among high per­form­ing peers, high ex­pec­ta­tions cou­pled with mo­ti­vat­ed staff, dri­ve them to ful­fil their po­ten­tial.

It is in­ter­est­ing too that af­ter the con­cor­dat in 1960, the top pri­vate fee-pay­ing schools could be ac­cessed based on aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment–not mon­ey, which was a move to­wards a fair­er sys­tem. If pub­lic per­cep­tions are cor­rect, cor­rup­tion has skewed this some­what al­low­ing those with pow­er to get their chil­dren in­to top schools. This, and be­cause every year some chil­dren from poor fam­i­lies do get a good school, have en­trenched the sys­tem.

The down­side of this mer­it sys­tem is that all pri­ma­ry school stu­dents have to do the cur­ricu­lum de­signed for the few aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly gift­ed. This leaves the vast ma­jor­i­ty not on­ly be­hind, but with no hope of catch up even if they start­ed learn­ing to read at the de­vel­op­men­tal­ly ill-ad­vised age of two or three; no hope even if they at­tend years of af­ter-school lessons.

Let's take a quick look at spe­cial needs. The on­ly gov­ern­ment spe­cial school I know of is Whar­ton Patrick and de­spite years of rhetoric about main­stream­ing spe­cial needs, no posts have been cre­at­ed for the spe­cial­ist sup­port teach­ers need­ed. Pro­vi­sion is by NGOs and pri­vate ef­fort: Autism So­ci­ety, Dyslex­ia As­so­ci­a­tion, Es­he's, Blind School, Deaf School, La­dy Ho­choy Home, Cen­tre for Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties–all strug­gling to serve rapid­ly grow­ing pop­u­la­tions. At Al­ta, we see the re­sults of this in­ad­e­quate pro­vi­sion. Non-read­ing adults with spe­cial needs come to Al­ta to learn to read, but our vol­un­teer tu­tors are not equipped to meet their chal­lenges. When we look for some­where to re­fer them to, we find noth­ing. Those who suf­fer the most in­jus­tice in our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem are those with dis­abil­i­ties and spe­cial needs.

Peo­ple of­ten ask how much sub­ven­tion Al­ta gets from gov­ern­ment. From one year to the next, the an­swer to this ques­tion does not change: Al­ta gets ze­ro dol­lars. I have come to see that this lack of gov­ern­ment in­ter­est in Al­ta works to our ad­van­tage. I may be wrong, but no politi­cian has ever de­clared pol­i­cy on adult lit­er­a­cy in T&T. In­deed, it is prob­a­bly gov­ern­ment's in­dif­fer­ence that has al­lowed Al­ta to be so in­no­v­a­tive. Al­ta is free to run a na­tion­al adult lit­er­a­cy pro­gramme with­out po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence, and as Fin­land has shown, this is the key to suc­cess in ed­u­ca­tion.

Be­come a part of Al­ta. Vol­un­teer, do­nate, spread the word. Al­ta vol­un­teers are un­paid. Call 624-AL­TA (2582) or e-mail al­tatt@ya­hoo.com or find us on Face­book: Al­ta Trinidad.