Well, as the old people say, “school bell ring” today!! And folks who were waiting anxiously to see what was gonna play out are holding their breaths!! We Guyanese do like to see “fair play” – but we like to see a good “bradaar” even more!! After all, hadn’t the Opposition elements in the Teachers’ Union – promised a real “bradaar” against the “wicked and vindictive installed regime” who’d “bought out” their officials who signed the contract??!!
Your Eyewitness hopes good sense will prevail all around, and there’s gonna be no duking it out in any school across our fair land. He hopes this will continue, since teachers don’t only teach what’s on the curriculum, but are 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 have the respect they were accorded during the days of yore!!
And that’s because of how they handled themselves in previous junctures of our history. Too often have they stopped looking at their job as a vocation, and did not even have 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 have gotta decide whether or not they’re professionals.
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 society with distinction.
Unfortunately, leading up 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 predecessors had earned. Over the years, some GTU officials have maintained this wrong-and-strong stance.
So, if the present teacher cohorts come out and follow their GTU-PNC MP-General Secretary even without giving their president 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!
…PNC fundraising
Your Eyewitness continues to be entertained by the Opposition factions vying to rise to the top of the heap. Sadly, from the goings-on here in Mudland and in Region 11 (Brooklyn subregion), there seems to be a lot of “Jumbie Umbrellas” springing up. But then that’s always the danger with (dung) heaps?!! The Opposition Leader’s up there with some of his lieutenants, and it’s interesting that he took time to ensure his team is ethnically balanced!!
We know for sure that one Jumbie Umbrella in Brooklyn agrees with one of the local fringe elements that the PNC shouldn’t “waste time” courting Indian-Guyanese votes. And this is where we can tell that things na regulah up in Brooklyn. So what gives?? Obviously, they’ve got skin in the game, and are using their fundraising ability to push their agenda in Guyana!! After all, there’s no CIA 303 Committee available to spring fund the party – as was done for Burnham back in the sixties!!
So, Aubrey’s team will move over to Queens also?
…appetite
Your Eyewitness was flummoxed when his wife returned from the market and informed him that the price for mutton had doubled to $1800 per lb!!
With the Govt bringing in all those Black Belly sheep from Barbados, shouldn’t the price have been dropped? What happened??
