Geisha Kow­lessar

There are a num­ber of pri­ma­ry school teach­ers who are un­able to com­mu­ni­cate to stu­dents in stan­dard Eng­lish.Mak­ing the point yes­ter­day was Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Dr Amery Browne, who spoke at a joint se­lect com­mit­tee (JSC) meet­ing held in Par­lia­ment.Ap­pear­ing be­fore the com­mit­tee were rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, in­clud­ing chief ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer Har­ri­lal Seecha­ran and act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Jen­nifer Daniel.

Say­ing the pri­ma­ry school en­vi­ron­ment pro­vid­ed a "pre­cious op­por­tu­ni­ty" where chil­dren could learn stan­dard Eng­lish, Browne added: "It is my view that we do have a num­ber of teach­ers with­in the sys­tem who them­selves are un­able to prop­er­ly com­mu­ni­cate in stan­dard Eng­lish, and chil­dren learn fun­da­men­tal­ly from ex­am­ple."If they are get­ting the dis­course from their teacher in the class­room at a dif­fer­ent lev­el or stan­dard, then that would cer­tain­ly in­flu­ence their out­come."

Browne said this prob­lem was not one which arose yes­ter­day, but he was dis­turbed by it.Seecha­ran said the min­istry ac­knowl­edged there were is­sues with stan­dard Eng­lish, but one of the min­istry's pri­or­i­ty ar­eas al­so in­clud­ed lit­er­a­cy.On the is­sue of lo­ca­tion of pri­ma­ry schools, Browne said fu­ture con­sid­er­a­tion ought to be tak­en when build­ing schools, es­pe­cial­ly where there might be a high con­cen­tra­tion of traf­fic.

"The ge­og­ra­phy of this coun­try is chang­ing and the de­mo­graph­ics are chang­ing and there are a num­ber of pri­ma­ry schools that are lo­cat­ed in very high-traf­fic ar­eas," Browne said.He said the Crys­tal Stream Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School in Diego Mar­tin was one stark ex­am­ple, as it stands "ba­si­cal­ly on the high­way.

"You have young chil­dren, at a very im­por­tant stage of their phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment, be­ing ex­posed, in my view, to in­creas­ing lev­els of pol­lu­tion over the years," he said."I would want the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to be think­ing about things like this and to mon­i­tor some of these is­sues and build it in­to their fu­ture pro­grammes or in­ten­tion of pri­ma­ry schools."On the is­sue of guid­ance coun­sel­lors and so­cial work­ers, Browne said this was im­por­tant and must be im­ple­ment­ed.

Giv­ing an ex­am­ple of the sig­nif­i­cant need for so­cial work­ers, Browne said: "A cou­ple weeks ago I was on a hill­side in the sub­urbs of Port-of-Spain and I saw three young chil­dren with what seemed to be a very un­usu­al neck­lace around their necks."And when I checked it was a piece of twine with an un­usu­al cas­ing like a bul­let cas­ing...a shell."In re­sponse Daniel said there would be more guid­ance coun­sel­lors, as Cab­i­net had al­ready giv­en its ap­proval.