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SEA results and poor state of education

DEBBIE JACOB WHAT IN the world are we doing when it comes to education in this country? It can’t come as any surprise to the government that we are failing at education. The 6,000 students who scored less than 50 per cent on the SEA exam offer proof of how bad the situation is. Our schools, which are a Caribbean version of colonial education geared towards exams that decide children’s future, only meet the needs of students aiming for tertiary education. The rest of our nation’s students merely cope with school and the irrelevant education it offers. Those 6,000 elementary students with dismal SEA scores learn nothing in school but how to feel inferior to the achievers. They get pushed up the educational ladder with no real understanding of the academic skills they need for life. Their confidence must be shattered by the time they get SEA results. Their academic struggle would have been visible for years so their scores would not have been a shock. Everyone would have recognised that they probably had learning issues and formal classes were not meeting their needs. The question is what could have been done to help these students along the way? Why did they have to suffer humiliation and failure in the name of education? When we moved from Common Entrance to SEA, the idea was to place every student in a secondary school. But what does that matter if students are only a place setter in schools? What incentive will these students have to step into a secondary school come September, and why should they stay? If they become dropouts, how will that affect society? I spent nearly 15 years working with prison inmates who went down the wrong road partly because they felt like failures in school. Some of them never had fancy academic labels for their learning issues. Their failure turned into rage. Feeling let down, they turned to gangs so that for the first time in their lives they could have a feeling of belonging, and power. No one wants to feel like a failure or a nobody. Ninety per cent of the young men I taught in prison had either quit school or been expelled. Some had brought guns to school. That’s quite a statement to make. Violence in school appears to be growing. Most people feign shock at this, but who is looking at the reason why? How much academic and emotional support do poor, struggling students who don’t have parents to pay for testing or extra lessons receive? And what is the plan for these students’ lives if tertiary education has never been in the picture? What do we picture these students doing in life? The desperate young men I taught in prison felt eager to succeed and willing to change their lives. In English class, they were curious and eager to learn. They became critical thinkers, and they showed creativity that never got tapped in school. This country caught a glimpse of these young men in the debate teams prisons and I formed. All ten prisons had debate teams that showed an understanding of how to turn a theme into a thesis statement, formulate compelling positions on a subject, conduct research, collaborate and deliver convincing arguments. Twice, they convincingly beat debate teams from the University of TT (UTT), and they beat a debate team of prison officers. From this visual model of debating, they learned how to write persuasive essays. Some of them went on to write CXC exams and get passes in English – in spite of failing in our schools. In prison, they demonstrated all the academic skills we should be teaching in our schools. What did schools miss in these students when they had them in our primary and secondary schools? Many young men told me the same thing: “If only we had teachers who took the time for us to learn.” They considered their major problem to be the pace in which they learned. This is not the teachers' fault. It’s government’s fault for stuffing classrooms with so many children some are bound to get left behind. Clearly, we have to consider better ways to reach and teach all of our children. Stop pushing irrelevant education. Consider the values and academic skills students should achieve rather than concentrating on exams. Create equal opportunities for education that don’t depend on a breakneck speed to complete a syllabus or extra lessons. It's time to pay attention to the signals we are getting about our failing education system. The post SEA results and poor state of education appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.