Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

(Con­tin­ued from last week)

Even be­fore I be­came a par­ent, I was as­tound­ed that peo­ple would send their chil­dren to a ju­nior sec. Decades ago, when I was in high school, the ju­nior and se­nior sec schools were dens of vice and in­iq­ui­ty as far as we knew in Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas. Those opin­ions were backed up by what we saw of the stu­dents of those schools, and the sto­ries they told. (Two of my broth­ers went to ju­nior and se­nior secs.)

Not that Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege was much bet­ter. In ret­ro­spect, the best thing I can say about that was that I didn't have to wor­ry about be­ing stabbed. As for the ed­u­ca­tion­al bit, well, PCC has pro­duced many schol­ar­ship win­ners and "bright boys" who now oc­cu­py high of­fice.But I see those years as a trag­ic waste of the tal­ent and po­ten­tial of thou­sands of promis­ing boys in an ar­cha­ic sys­tem.

The ap­proach to ed­u­ca­tion back then, as now, in pres­tige and pro­le­tar­i­an schools alike, re­mains one with a heavy em­pha­sis on ex­ams, rote learn­ing, re­gur­gi­ta­tion and con­for­mi­ty of thought. That sys­tem moulds chil­dren in­to the adults who have the coun­try in the state it's in now. Its prod­ucts are dog­mat­ic, nar­row-mind­ed, and in­ca­pable of in­no­va­tion and ini­tia­tive, and of­ten de­void of any moral sense. This much is vis­i­ble in the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum re­ports on T&T.

(It would be in­ter­est­ing to study Tri­ni SMEs–small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es–to de­ter­mine whether their own­ers' ed­u­ca­tion­al at­tain­ments helped or hin­dered their suc­cess. The years of MBA, en­tre­pre­neur­ship and in­no­va­tion ed­u­ca­tion at ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions haven't in­creased the na­tion­al lev­els of in­no­va­tion, en­tre­pre­neur­ship and busi­ness pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.)

Far from help­ing, what I've seen of ed­u­ca­tion as a teacher and stu­dent con­vinces me that for the ma­jor­i­ty of chil­dren, the Tri­ni school sys­tem is trau­mat­ic. When you ag­gre­gate stress of traf­fic, hus­tle, and frus­tra­tion in get­ting to school with school bul­lies, ab­sent teach­ers, poor san­i­ta­tion, and gen­er­al squalor, the col­lec­tive ef­fect is to stunt men­tal and emo­tion­al growth, en­gen­der a con­tempt for ed­u­ca­tion, and a gen­er­al ap­a­thy to any­thing in­tel­lec­tu­al.

And if the pub­lic pri­ma­ry school sys­tem is bad, the sec­ondary school sys­tem (from the re­ports writ­ten by Ramesh De­osaran in the last decade, and books like Mustapha and Brun­ton's Is­sues In Ed­u­ca­tion) is a prison for body and mind.

Cer­tain­ly in some schools teach­ers do good work and chil­dren suc­ceed. But in the mass, giv­en falling lit­er­a­cy and ris­ing school vi­o­lence, it's clear the sys­tem has failed. And many par­ents know this. But they haven't tak­en the ob­vi­ous step: re­mov­ing their chil­dren from the schools en masse. This is most like­ly be­cause they be­lieve the on­ly op­tion is ex­pen­sive pri­vate school­ing.

But there is an­oth­er op­tion: home­school­ing. Sir W Arthur Lewis (the St Lu­cian No­bel lau­re­ate in eco­nom­ics, 1979), at­trib­uted his aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess to a child­hood ill­ness which kept him from school for three months. To com­pen­sate, his school­teacher fa­ther taught him at home. When he re­turned to for­mal school he was so far ahead, he had to be ad­vanced two class/years, and that ad­van­tage stayed with him through his aca­d­e­m­ic life.

Yes, not every­one's par­ent is a school­teacher, and sev­er­al oth­er po­ten­tial pit­falls arise, which are sur­pris­ing­ly easy to over­come. First, par­ents' con­cern about "qual­i­fied" teach­ers. But any­one with A-Lev­els is con­sid­ered by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion qual­i­fied to be an as­sis­tant teacher in high school, and a first de­gree is qual­i­fi­ca­tion enough to teach up to A-Lev­els.

And here is where the In­ter­net lives up to its hype and be­comes more than a pornog­ra­phy store­house. In ten min­utes, us­ing Google, I was able to find the Na­tion­al Home Ed­u­ca­tion Re­search In­sti­tute (nheri.org), In­for­mal Ed­u­ca­tion (in­fed.org), and home­school.com. There are tu­to­r­i­al pro­grammes for stu­dents from preschool to ter­tiary lev­el, from ABC Mouse, to khanacad­e­my.org, to Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty's on­line cours­es. The ma­jor­i­ty of these are free.

Prob­lems of lo­gis­tics and ad­min­is­tra­tion al­so arise. If groups of par­ents form small co-op­er­a­tives, one stay-at-home par­ent could su­per­vise two to five chil­dren dur­ing work­ing hours, in some­body's home. If par­ents all work, a tu­tor could be hired from 9 am to 3 pm. Kids will get up to all sorts of mis­chief, but they do this in school as well as at home.

If the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion wish­es to help, rather than be­ing a gi­ant tool of frus­tra­tion, it could cre­ate an en­abling home-school sys­tem by sup­ply­ing roam­ing or vis­it­ing teach­ers, guid­ance, and ma­te­ri­als for home­school­ing.If this sounds fan­ci­ful, it's be­cause we've lived all our lives in a sys­tem de­signed to fos­ter de­pen­den­cy and help­less­ness.

At its worst, home­school­ing couldn't do more harm to chil­dren than is be­ing done at many schools. It is a re­al­i­ty all over the first world. Few­er stu­dents in the schools means less traf­fic, less stress, more par­ent in­volve­ment, and would al­low teach­ers to give more at­ten­tion to the ones who choose to re­main with the tra­di­tion­al mod­el.There is one catch: par­ents must change their at­ti­tudes to the state and world gen­er­al­ly.

It's a sad fact that many par­ents (and chil­dren) take ed­u­ca­tion for grant­ed and see it as a right rather than a priv­i­lege, an­oth­er gov­ern­ment en­ti­tle­ment. Many see it as a tire­some route to a diplo­ma, a job. Many teach­ers and ad­min­is­tra­tors think this way. These at­ti­tudes are not uni­ver­sal, but they are wide­spread and have to change.

Here the na­tion can learn some­thing from Hin­du cow­shed ed­u­ca­tion of the 50s. The rea­son so many suc­cess­ful pro­fes­sion­als came from cow­sheds is that they un­der­stood the val­ue of ed­u­ca­tion, re­spect­ed it, and treat­ed it as a priv­i­lege. And they didn't ex­pect the Gov­ern­ment to do them any favours. Look at them now.