With T&T’s ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in­creas­ing­ly un­der the spot­light with the lev­el of vi­o­lence in and around schools across the coun­try, the Sun­day Guardian’s RYAN BA­CHOO sat down with for­mer Howard Uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent Dr Wayne Fred­er­ick, who hails from the twin-is­land re­pub­lic. Fol­low­ing are ex­cerpts from the con­ver­sa­tion to be aired tonight on CNC3’s The Big In­ter­view pro­gramme at 8 pm.

Q: How have you spent your re­tire­ment since leav­ing Howard Uni­ver­si­ty as pres­i­dent?

A: I’ve been spend­ing a lot of leisure time so I get a lot of time with my wife. My son is out of the house. We have a daugh­ter who’s ap­ply­ing for col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties, but she dri­ves now so I try to spend a lot of time with my wife and vis­it­ing my son, as well as vis­it­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go. I’ve been spend­ing time go­ing to schools through­out the coun­try, talk­ing to them about at­tend­ing col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties.

So, I made a pledge to come here every month and to vis­it the school every time I come. And so far, I’ve been able to keep that go­ing.

You said you’ve made it your pri­or­i­ty to vis­it a school in T&T at least once every month. That’s a huge com­mit­ment. Why?

It’s im­por­tant, I think of the op­por­tu­ni­ties that I had. Com­ing out of high school here, I got a great ed­u­ca­tion, but I didn’t know as much about col­lege and uni­ver­si­ty. I on­ly ap­plied to Howard Uni­ver­si­ty, and I was for­tu­nate.

What I have ex­pe­ri­enced, es­pe­cial­ly as a uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent, has taught me that if I can give that op­por­tu­ni­ty to oth­ers to ex­plain to them what is a very com­pli­cat­ed process and kind of de­mys­ti­fy it for them, more of them would ap­ply.

And they’re very bright stu­dents who some­times just think that that’s not some­thing they can at­tain, but the re­al­i­ty is they can. And that’s why I want­ed to spend that time, es­pe­cial­ly in schools where they won’t see some­one like me, prob­a­bly ever.

What do you make of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in T&T—where you left it to where you see it right now?

When I left it, I thought it was a world-class sys­tem. I was able to com­pete with any­one on any lev­el. I be­came a can­cer sur­geon.

I still think that the main in­gre­di­ents for that are there, but it cer­tain­ly needs more in­vest­ment and more at­ten­tion, more ac­count­abil­i­ty in the sys­tem.

But, you can’t do that with­out re­sources and that’s the biggest gap that I see. Now, I think, you have more so­ci­etal is­sues you have to deal with. COVID was very dis­rup­tive.

You have lots of stu­dents who are at­tend­ing and, I think, prob­a­bly not at­tend­ing with a holis­tic ap­proach to ed­u­ca­tion.

Some of them are prob­a­bly nu­tri­tion­al­ly de­fi­cient, not get­ting ac­cess to great meals every sin­gle day, have so­cial is­sues at home and prob­a­bly don’t have the two-par­ent sys­tem that I had in my own house­hold.

There­fore, the so­lu­tion to that is not on­ly the schools but our en­tire com­mu­ni­ty has to con­tribute and get in­volved to make sure that these young peo­ple are try­ing to do the right thing and are be­ing held ac­count­able.

Are you say­ing the so­ci­etal is­sues that T&T faces are cor­rod­ing the school sys­tem?

It cer­tain­ly is. You can’t avoid it. Crime is sig­nif­i­cant. You have more of a pulling at­trac­tion to things that are go­ing to give peo­ple short-term grat­i­fi­ca­tion ver­sus the sac­ri­fices you need to make for long-term grat­i­fi­ca­tion.

And most im­por­tant­ly, when you take away hope ... when you take away that an­tic­i­pa­tion of to­mor­row, you re­al­ly take away a lot from a child. The most im­por­tant thing that I had from that ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem was con­fi­dence.

I had con­fi­dence in­stilled in me at home that I could do any­thing pos­si­ble, and I had that in school and teach­ers.

I think in our so­ci­ety, re­gard­less of what the is­sue is, whether it’s crime, drugs, what­ev­er it is, you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have young peo­ple with that con­fi­dence, and it’s tough to be a good leader, to be a con­fi­dent leader if you don’t have peo­ple in­still­ing that con­fi­dence.

There are very sim­i­lar chal­lenges in the Unit­ed States ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. How do we go about fix­ing those chal­lenges that you have spo­ken about?

I think it comes back to the ba­sics of what a so­ci­ety should be. Ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions, in my opin­ion, are here to am­pli­fy oth­er peo­ple’s hu­man­i­ty.

That am­pli­fi­ca­tion of hu­man­i­ty doesn’t start when a young per­son walks in­to a school, it starts at home, it starts with how peo­ple ap­proach them in their com­mu­ni­ty and what con­fi­dence you get. I grew up on the same street as Chalk­dust. I watched his ca­reer and how he ex­celled. I had friends around me such as Sha­ka His­lop, who played soc­cer and ex­celled.

As a mat­ter of fact, he was one of the rea­sons I went to Howard. I grew up in a coun­try where the prime min­is­ter at the time that I was in school was revered. Every day, every sin­gle one of us has an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be try­ing to change those so­cial ills. It’s a huge task.

There’s a big dis­par­i­ty in schools and the school sys­tem where high­er-in­come stu­dents at­tend school what they re­ceive and where low­er-in­come stu­dents at­tend.

There is no eq­ui­ty in the sys­tem, and so you have to fight every day to make sure that you’re pro­mot­ing that and that you’re putting the right re­sources in front of peo­ple.

What do we need to fo­cus on to meet the de­mands of our schools?

I think we need a na­tion­al plan. I think that the na­tion­al plan has to ad­dress a so­cial con­struct in so­ci­ety. It has to al­so ad­dress the cul­ture, and I de­fine cul­ture as peo­ple and tol­er­at­ed be­hav­iour.

We have to change our dy­nam­ic around what that tol­er­at­ed be­hav­iour is, but that has to hap­pen on a dai­ly ba­sis.

To­day, all of those types of con­structs in our cul­tur­al trans­for­ma­tion have been erod­ed. We have to in­vest, we have to be very, very clear about what we’re in­vest­ing in. And this is not just about books, it’s about in­fra­struc­ture. It’s about teacher de­vel­op­ment. So even the physics teach­ers at St Mary’s Col­lege.

Yes, the lab was trans­formed, but as I said to the prin­ci­pal, un­less you in­vest in the de­vel­op­ment so that they get bet­ter at what they’re do­ing, you’re not go­ing to get there. And the fourth and last one is that we have to have a di­rec­tion. We have to have a north star as to what it is we’re try­ing to achieve. And you have to have had da­ta to cor­rect that.

Teach­ers al­so need to be com­pen­sat­ed very dif­fer­ent­ly. Yes, we can’t nec­es­sar­i­ly pay teach­ers more in terms of cash, but we have to cre­ate na­tion­al pro­grammes that help them with hous­ing, help them with get­ting a car, help them with oth­er things that oth­er­wise they will not have the re­sources to do so that teach­ing be­comes more of an at­trac­tive pro­fes­sion.

What about the dis­par­i­ty in ed­u­ca­tion in T&T?

It’s re­al, and it’s sig­nif­i­cant. I went to see Ce­dros Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School, and I went to Point Fortin, and when I see what those stu­dents don’t have, it’s sad. There is no SAT test­ing site in To­ba­go. So, if you ever want to take the ad­mis­sion test to go to col­lege and uni­ver­si­ty, and you are in To­ba­go, you have to come over here. Not every­body is go­ing to have those re­sources.

And even if you do, you may have to come over here and spend a night in a ho­tel. That’s even more ex­pen­sive. So those dis­par­i­ties have to be closed. The min­is­ter [of Ed­u­ca­tion] has been very clear.

She has iden­ti­fied schools that she thinks need more as­sis­tance, and those are schools that are now on my list for me to go to and to make sure that I have my pres­ence felt and I’m able to pass on the in­for­ma­tion to them.

Why do you think so many [Trinidad and To­ba­go stu­dents] are on­ly in­ter­est­ed in ven­tur­ing to uni­ver­si­ties in the Unit­ed States?

That’s a very in­ter­est­ing point. As I look at the uni­ver­si­ties here, the high schools, there’s a lot to be had here, but I think there’s not enough ed­u­ca­tion about it for the young peo­ple who are com­ing through the sys­tem.

On the oth­er side of it is that we have to cre­ate more jobs for those spe­cialised stu­dents. You can­not go to the Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies and get an en­gi­neer­ing de­gree and then on the oth­er side of that, not be able to get a job.

We should be plan­ning and set­ting up all re­sources set­ting up our struc­tures.

So whether it is WASA, the pub­lic world, or what­ev­er it is, we should be cre­at­ing a pipeline to re­ceive these stu­dents as they re­turn and to plan for so­ci­ety mov­ing for­ward for them.

Has ed­u­ca­tion across the world be­come way too ex­pen­sive?

With­out a doubt, it’s way too ex­pen­sive. And I’ll be hon­est with you, part of that is be­cause we’ve got­ten in­to a bit of a race war. We’ve got­ten in­to this war of who can sup­ply all the trin­kets as it were.

We’ve got­ten away from the core as­pect of what we do. So, peo­ple are build­ing rock climb­ing walls, they have pesto in the cafe­te­ria, and every­body wants to be bet­ter than the next per­son. Col­lege ath­let­ics has been in­vest­ed in heav­i­ly, huge sta­di­ums. I’m not say­ing that all these things are un­nec­es­sary, but they are not nec­es­sary for the core of what we need to do in terms of ed­u­ca­tion.

And I think we do need to peel back and fo­cus more on the key things we need to do. What do we pay fac­ul­ty? And what do we do in terms of in­struc­tion? How good is our in­struc­tion, so that that’s re­al­ly what peo­ple are pay­ing for? But, when you start pay­ing for very fan­cy dorms and fan­cy cafe­te­rias, fan­cy play ar­eas, I re­al­ly think it be­comes dif­fi­cult. And then every­body wants to at­tract the best stu­dents. And so you have to go one up what the pri­or per­son did and I think that that, un­for­tu­nate­ly, has been the wrong thing for us.