Na­tion­al schol­ar­ship win­ner, teacher and au­thor Paula Lu­cie-Smith on Fri­day blamed pol­i­tics for erod­ing the in­tegri­ty and qual­i­ty of the na­tion’s in­sti­tu­tions.

Lu­cie-Smith made the com­ment while de­liv­er­ing an ad­dress to Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies (UWI) grad­u­ates of the Fac­ul­ty of So­cial Sci­ences at UWI Spec, St Au­gus­tine, which was at­tend­ed by uni­ver­si­ty’s prin­ci­pal Prof Bri­an Copeland and its vice-chan­cel­lor Prof Sir Hillary Beck­les.

Mo­ments af­ter be­ing con­ferred the de­gree of Doc­tor of Law, hon­oris causa, by UWI’s chan­cel­lor Robert Bermudez, Lu­cie-Smith told par­ents, guests and grad­u­ants that hav­ing taught at a se­nior com­pre­hen­sive school, she left for one rea­son — de­ci­sions gov­erned by votes at the next elec­tion.

“Pol­i­tics in­vad­ed to erode the in­tegri­ty and qual­i­ty of the na­tion’s in­sti­tu­tion and made our ef­forts fu­tile.”

She cit­ed one ex­am­ple of the ero­sion with the abo­li­tion of the Com­mon En­trance ex­am­i­na­tion which was an­nounced by then prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day in a bid put an end to the chil­dren’s trau­ma.

“Pol­i­tics was the dri­ver of uni­ver­sal sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion,” she said.

In 2000, Lu­cie-Smith, who is the founder of the Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (AL­TA), said the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion met and asked her what AL­TA could of­fer stu­dents who were not lit­er­ate and en­ter­ing the sec­ondary school sys­tem.

Al­though she sub­mit­ted a pro­pos­al, she said no word came.

Some 18 years lat­er, Lu­cie-Smith said stu­dents con­tin­ue to en­ter sec­ondary schools bare­ly able to read and ex­it five years lat­er with the same low lit­er­a­cy, but now with an en­trenched feel­ing of be­ing out­side of so­ci­ety.

“Anger per­vades our sec­ondary schools, anger wrought by ex­treme frus­tra­tion. What did the group of teens who set fire to their school have in com­mon? Not one of them could read.”

She said with­out pro­vi­sion for those with no ap­ti­tude for lit­er­a­cy “uni­ver­sal sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion is de­stroy­ing trust in our schools and erod­ing be­lief in the val­ue of ed­u­ca­tion.”

Lu­cie-Smith ques­tioned why didn’t we “say no” when a politi­cian dic­tat­ed our ed­u­ca­tion pol­i­cy.

In the ear­ly 1970s, Lu­cie-Smith said Fin­land had an un­der-per­form­ing ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

“Then took ed­u­ca­tion out of pol­i­tics. They em­barked on a long-term pol­i­cy to de­vel­op a pro­fes­sion­al body of ed­u­ca­tors and then turned over the de­ci­sions to the teach­ers.”

To­day, she said, Fin­land is rat­ed among the high­est in the world in in­no­va­tion, en­tre­pre­neur and cre­ativ­i­ty.

“Isn’t it time we took pol­i­tics out of ed­u­ca­tion? And out of oth­er ar­eas? Since in­de­pen­dence, suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have taught us that we can nei­ther trust their vi­sion nor their pur­pose. Our politi­cians fail to en­gage peo­ple.”