Melis­sa Williams-Sam­bra­no

melis­sa.williams@cnc3.co.tt

More than half of the stu­dents who at­tend Ser­vol are not ac­cess­ing on­line teach­ing or are not even get­ting the print pack­ages be­ing of­fered by the school.

This was the word yes­ter­day from Ser­vol chair­per­son Sis­ter Ruth Mon­trichard, who ad­mit­ted she is con­cerned by this and the im­pact it is hav­ing on the stu­dents’ men­tal health.

Speak­ing with Na­tal­ie Legore on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Sis­ter Ruth said de­spite the push for on­line learn­ing na­tion­al­ly and their best ef­forts, some stu­dents are falling by the way­side be­cause they just don’t have de­vices or in­ter­net ac­cess.

“We have about 1,200 stu­dents across the board and I would say on­ly about a third of them are able to ac­cess on­line learn­ing and even that has se­ri­ous prob­lems,” Mon­trichard said.

Ze­ro­ing in on a fig­ure, she added, “I would say about, off­hand, about 500 or 700. The oth­ers would come on in­ter­mit­tent­ly and they log on and then they dis­ap­pear. Then we do pack­ages, the par­ents don’t come for the pack­ages and if they do come they come two days late and then they don’t bring it back.”

Mon­trichard, who has been in­volved in com­mu­ni­ty and so­cial work for decades, said even for the stu­dents who do ac­cess on­line learn­ing, it may not be ap­plic­a­ble to them since the pro­grammes of­fered by the school are all skills-based, like plumb­ing and weld­ing to name a few. She said this makes it very dif­fi­cult for stu­dents to fol­low the course work, since they re­quire prac­ti­cal work.

She said she fears the stu­dents are al­so just re­ceiv­ing in­for­ma­tion and not the ed­u­ca­tion they re­quire.

Mon­trichard ex­plained that ed­u­ca­tion does not on­ly in­clude books but re­quires men­tor­ing, mo­ti­va­tion, dis­ci­pline and in­ter­ac­tion with teach­ers and school­mates.

“I re­al­ly wor­ry about what is hap­pen­ing to these young peo­ple, be­tween the ages, es­pe­cial­ly the old­er ones, who, as you know, can get in­to all sorts of sit­u­a­tions that very of­ten are neg­a­tive rather than pos­i­tive,” she said.

“I think one of the things that wor­ries me, with the on­line learn­ing, is we’re do­ing in­for­ma­tion, not ed­u­ca­tion be­cause ed­u­ca­tion has oth­er as­pects. So­cial, spir­i­tu­al, cre­ative, in­tel­lec­tu­al fine but when you have un­mo­ti­vat­ed stu­dents, it’s very dif­fi­cult to tell them come on­line. Even the dis­ci­pline of com­ing to a cen­tre every day. These chil­dren are not ac­cus­tomed to get­ting up ear­ly.”

Mon­trichard said she does not be­lieve stu­dents are ac­tu­al­ly learn­ing de­spite their ef­forts to en­gage with stu­dents, even us­ing their phones.

She ex­plained that many of the stu­dents who at­tend Ser­vol have not had a smooth jour­ney through the con­ven­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and this, cou­pled with oth­er is­sues, leaves them ex­posed to ma­nip­u­la­tion from the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

She al­so said the lack of in­ter­ac­tion in the phys­i­cal class­room, along with learn­ing strug­gles, may al­so lead to men­tal health prob­lems.

“It’s not easy for par­ents, they’re strug­gling and their chil­dren are the ones, I am re­al­ly con­cerned about the men­tal health of chil­dren. And even for those who can get on­line, we have so much re­search show­ing that chil­dren should not be in front of a com­put­er for more than a cer­tain time, it dam­ages their brain.”

Mon­trichard said she is hop­ing that they can re­turn to a class­room set­ting even in small groups on al­ter­nate days. She added that the present sys­tem may al­so lead to prob­lems in the fu­ture when it comes to em­ploy­ment and job per­for­mance.