Sat­narayan Ma­haraj

Part 1

The ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in T&T would have crum­bled with alarm­ing swift­ness if it were not for the enor­mous pres­ence and con­tri­bu­tion of the sev­er­al de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards–both big and small. De­nom­i­na­tion­al boards now need to raise a col­lec­tive voice to con­vey their mes­sage to the mis­in­formed and ill-in­formed sec­tions of the pop­u­la­tion.With­in re­cent times this has be­come fash­ion­able for a small group of idle in­di­vid­u­als who at­tempt to un­der­mine the po­si­tion and the sta­tus of the de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

Noth­ing has been pre­sent­ed or even re­mote­ly sup­port­ed by ev­i­dence, re­search or facts, to give cre­dence to the il­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al state­ments. In fact, their views are an alarm­ing, will­ful per­ver­sion of facts and one has to ques­tion per­son­al agen­das and mo­tives.

It seems quite like­ly that their lack of in­flu­ence in dis­abling the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is the key mo­tive, since de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools are well known to be in op­po­si­tion to ef­forts to desta­bilise schools. The con­stant clo­sure for a host of friv­o­lous rea­sons that im­pact neg­a­tive­ly on our young chil­dren's ed­u­ca­tion, more es­pe­cial­ly of gov­ern­ment pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools, is a good ex­am­ple.

De­nom­i­na­tion­al schools re­main open and de­liv­er ed­u­ca­tion ex­cept in the most ad­verse cir­cum­stances. In this con­text, it is there­fore im­moral that TTUTA's Pres­i­dent would say "Our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is be­ing ma­nip­u­lat­ed by very pow­er­ful forces which will then main­tain the sta­tus quo, to main­tain that close dif­fer­en­tial, to main­tain that sys­tem of elit­ism that char­ac­terised colo­nial­ism." (T&T Guardian, Au­gust 10, 2014, P A19).

If there is any force that ma­nip­u­lates the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem to the detri­ment of the na­tion, it is TTUTA. More than any force in the coun­try, TTUTA has to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the se­ri­ous prob­lems of crime and de­viance in the so­ci­ety.

When teach­ers can take 28 days leave per year; when teach­ers take five days a year for an ob­so­lete "bank time"; when schools lose a fur­ther ten days a year for all kinds of ac­tiv­i­ties; when teach­ers mer­ci­less­ly walk off the school's plant for days, weeks and months at a time for pet­ty rea­sons; when schools have end-of-term ex­am­i­na­tions for al­most a month to six weeks each term, in­stead of one to two weeks, then what can one ex­pect?

Tru­an­cy, de­viance and in­dis­ci­pline are the key out­comes of the in­dis­ci­pline and ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that will re­sult in po­si­tions tak­en by TTUTA. TTUTA seems to be peev­ed by its in­abil­i­ty to ma­nip­u­late teach­ers and prin­ci­pals at the de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools.

Make no mis­take, there is a sim­i­lar plan to as­sas­si­nate the in­tegri­ty and per­for­mance of de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools, to re­duce them to the lev­el of or­di­nar­i­ness of most gov­ern­ment schools. Al­so, make no mis­take, the de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards will not sit qui­et­ly and al­low peo­ple with agen­das to dis­man­tle our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem which was first start­ed by re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions more than a cen­tu­ry ago.

Very briefly, some peo­ple seem in­clined to de­monise de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools as be­ing re­spon­si­ble for a per­ceived un­equal ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. This is fur­thest from the truth and re­li­gious boards will not al­low such a false­hood to be un­chal­lenged. More than a cen­tu­ry ago, re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions, as part of their man­date to bet­ter the con­di­tion of peo­ple in so­ci­ety, helped cre­ate an ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem to re­spond to the ed­u­ca­tion­al need to their flocks.

Of course, schools con­struct­ed at that time could not fa­cil­i­tate the en­try of every­one who was de­sirous of en­ter­ing a school. How­ev­er, over sev­er­al decades, re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions main­tained an ex­pan­sion course to al­low en­try for as many stu­dents as space would fa­cil­i­tate.

In fact, the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha be­gan the es­tab­lish­ment of its ed­u­ca­tion pres­ence in 1952 and con­tin­ued un­til this ex­pan­sion was un­for­tu­nate­ly stopped for decades by the for­mer PNM regime. With 43 pri­ma­ry schools and five sec­ondary schools, the SDMS has a sig­nif­i­cant part­ner­ship with the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

All of our schools have been con­sis­tent­ly per­form­ing in var­i­ous spheres–re­li­gion, cul­tur­al, in­tel­lec­tu­al, etc, with high lev­els of suc­cess, and so too are oth­er schools owned by oth­er re­li­gious bod­ies. It is this kind of suc­cess that has made some peo­ple en­vi­ous of de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools. It is rub­bish to be­lieve that the de­struc­tion of the de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools will re­sult in a more equal ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem or im­proved school per­for­mance.

It is equal­ly fool­hardy to be­lieve that un­der­min­ing the de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools would re­sult in im­prove­ments in so­cial and moral ed­u­ca­tion, and the all-round de­vel­op­ment of stu­dents. In an il­lit­er­ate and dys­func­tion­al so­ci­ety it is easy to ped­dle false­hoods as though they are the truth.This se­ries will demon­strate the im­por­tance and pro­found con­tri­bu­tion of de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools in this so­ci­ety and the re­spect and ap­pre­ci­a­tion that are due to the re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions for their self­less con­tri­bu­tion to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

When a mis­guid­ed few peo­ple, per­se­vere with their mis­in­for­ma­tion against de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools, it is ap­pro­pri­ate for de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards to state the facts and dis­pel the lies.

To be con­tin­ued...