Today, more than 200,000 children – over a quarter of our population – will be trudging off to school from the nursery to the secondary levels. In Guyana, with our history of slavery and indentureship, education was seen as the ladder that would take us into the spheres of life that had long been denied to us. When inculcated, education would allow the fulfilment of the potential that lies in all humanity.
But what has been our experience with “education” in the 178 years after slavery and 99 years after indentureship? Few would dispute the assertion that the promise has not been delivered. But President David Granger has consistently promoted the value of an “education” and had continued the tradition of the PPP Administration that allocated the largest segment of the budget to “education”.
While most would agree that education is necessary but not sufficient for delivering the good life everyone wants, there is also a lack of clarity about what education should and can deliver. In his launching of “Education Month” that coincides with the opening of the new school year in September, Education Minister, Dr Rupert Roopnaraine called upon parents and “other stakeholders” – community leaders; Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs); religious organisations and development partners – to partner with the education sector to deliver the product to the students. But are these “stakeholders” on the same page when it comes to agreement of what is the purpose of the touted “education”?
Over the ages, the purpose of education has constantly shifted both in form and substance, even with different civilisations, but it was conceded by all that it was a way of “socialising” the young into the manners and mores of the society in which they would live. After slavery the “schooling” was taken over by the Christian Church, which saw its mission as extirpating from the ex-slaves, indentured servants and Indigenous people of their “Pagan and Heathen” ways. How much of this still remains in our “educational system”.
For the children of their own elites, the British introduced a replica of their boarding schools with Queen’s and Bishops’ to create “scholars and gentlemen”. How much of this remains and how much has it evolved with the evolution of the Western model under the influence of the ethos of the USA. In addition to the social aspect of “creating citizens”, education was linked to the satisfaction of economic needs, and this has now taken centre stage.
We can see this tendency expressed in the constant exhortation that our students must focus on the STEM subjects – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Recently, some sociologists have argued that modern schools exist primarily to serve a practical credentialing function in society to place workers into different strata in the maws of a globalised working class. While this may have a practical purpose based on a realistic appraisal of the global economy, there is still, in the end, the need for people to live in harmony together. This will not be delivered by accident.
In our present education system, there is not enough emphasis on the creation of citizens, taking into cognisance the plural nature of our society. Just recently, President David Granger had to upbraid one community religious leader for being insensitive to the nuances of the mores of Indigenous people. It was obvious that the religious leader was not being malicious, but he just was not educated about the culture of another group in the Guyanese mosaic.
Within the ambit of increasing “social cohesion” in our society, all stakeholders and especially parents must accept and endorse this need for an “education” that fulfil social needs such as social and moral responsibilities. There has been talk of a “Civics Education” component introduced into the curriculum of our schools, but from the above discussion, this needs to be widened.
We hope the promised Strategic Plan of the Education Ministry take these concerns on board.
