Charles Kong Soo

Val­ues taught in schools will im­prove the qual­i­ty of ed­u­ca­tion and will act as a de­ter­rent to crime and de­viant be­hav­iour says new­ly elect­ed In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IRO) pres­i­dent, Har­ryper­sad Ma­haraj. He was elect­ed on June 25 and re­places Em­rol Gould. Rep­re­sent­ing the Hin­du faith, Ma­haraj has served as IRO sec­re­tary for eight years lead­ing up to his elec­tion, and is a for­mer pres­i­dent of the or­gan­i­sa­tion (1997 and 2000).

"We had rec­om­mend­ed to the Gov­ern­ment that val­ues of ed­u­ca­tion must be taught in schools," Ma­haraj said. "We thought that it is def­i­nite­ly go­ing to help with the qual­i­ty of ed­u­ca­tion and re­duc­ing crime which is a big is­sue in to­day's world. It is an al­ter­na­tive to crime and bad be­hav­iour," Ma­haraj said.

He said dur­ing his pre­vi­ous tenure as pres­i­dent, the IRO host­ed a three-day con­sul­ta­tion and con­fer­ence on val­ues of ed­u­ca­tion to be taught in schools and it was opened by prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day and ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter and now Prime Min­is­ter, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Ma­haraj said some teach­ers were trained to teach the sub­ject but the ini­tia­tive was not im­ple­ment­ed across the board and the cur­ricu­lum was left to lan­guish on the shelf at the Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre in McBean, Cou­va. He said it was the IRO's feel­ing that the ini­tia­tive will strong­ly as­sist in the mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the be­hav­iour and lifestyle of chil­dren, there­by re­duce crime.

Ma­haraj said that a char­ac­ter ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme was re­cent­ly launched by the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion and the IRO would be re­mind­ing the gov­ern­ment of the cur­ricu­lum with a view to im­ple­ment­ing val­ues ed­u­ca­tion. He said there were sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ini­tia­tives now that cost mil­lions of dol­lars but which on­ly pro­vid­ed tem­po­rary re­lief and on­ly ben­e­fit­ted a few youths in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties.