…school
Well, as the old people say, “school bell ring” on Monday, for folks were waiting anxiously to see what was going to play out. Guyanese do like to see “fair play”, but they like to see a good “bradaar” even more!! After all, hadn’t the Opposition elements – especially the Teachers Union – promised a real “bradaar” against the “wicked and vindictive installed regime”, that was taking advantage against teachers as they tightened repression in the “growing apartheid state”!!
But from the reports seen by your Eyewitness, it looked like good sense prevailed all around, ‘cause there were no reports of any confrontation in any school across our fair land. He hopes this will continue, because teachers don’t only teach what’s on the curriculum, they’re supposed to be role models for their young charges. And that’s so, even though it’s gotta be acknowledged that teachers nowadays certainly don’t command the respect as those during the days of yore!!
And that’s because of how they handled themselves in previous junctures of our history. Too often they stopped looking at their job as a vocation, and not even a fallback position to keep food in the pot. While everybody’s gotta eat, certain professions demand that their members be…well…PROFESSIONAL! And teachers gotta decide whether they’re professionals or not. Historically, as teachers, they were the most educated coming out of the colonial era, and from that platform, they went on to educate themselves further to serve themselves and the society with distinction.
Unfortunately, leading to independence, teachers – like Civil Servants – allowed themselves to become pawns of the PNC. They lost a lot of respect when they supported the latter’s “80-day strike” to force the PPP out of Government in 1963. They staged “sit-ins” by refusing to allow students entry into the schools, and some kids had to step over them!! Teachers never recovered the respect their older peers had earned. Over the years, they maintained this wrong-and-strong stance.
So, if the present cohort of teachers come out and follow their PNC MP head of the union – even without giving the Ministry or their favourite target Minister Manickchand – a good “buse down”, they’ll certainly be doing a further disservice to the profession; maybe even dealing it a fatal blow. After all, this is an era when there’re all kinds of new ways of transmitting information – sans teachers.
Do Guyanese teachers realise that very soon kids will be snapping on those headsets they use for games and experiencing virtual reality – to imbibe information?? Don’t they realize they might soon be as dead as Dodos??
Guyana’s finally in a position to compensate professionals – but they gotta get with the programme. They might lose corn and husk if they don’t act professionally!
…the education collapse
When Burnham was finished with Guyana – having completely devastated the 80% of the economy it controlled – the thirst for learning and knowledge, honed over more than a hundred years after slavery and indentureship, had been obliterated. Why go to school when the only way you could get a decent job was by having a PNC party card?? After another decade, it was “why go to school when there were no jobs outside of cutting cane or selling sweeties at the street corner??”
Anyhow, in what’s known as a “systemic” problem, the urge to excel remains dampened and emaciated for most kids at the bottom of the ladder — which means the vast majority of the kids, since the oil wealth will take some time to trickle down. And this is even after the PPP heroically built back the infrastructure and trained thousands of teachers since 1992.
And Burnham’s picture – which scared the bejusus out of the kids – was taken off their exercise books!
