Dear Editor,
The report by the Commission of Inquiry requested by the Minister of Education is heartening and timely.
This is because it is a well-known fact that much needs to be done to correct the engineered deficiencies which are responsible for much of the failures and underachievement of students, which are generated annually at both the CSEC and NGSA levels in the public education system.
It also would be a pleasant surprise if the CoI did in fact deal with perhaps the greatest source of failures and underachievement within the public education system – teachers who give lessons; and who, wilfully and in dereliction of their duties — it is probably now widely known – short-change children by under-teaching them in order to force them to attend lessons.
Any thorough evaluation of this issue throughout the public education system would expose the entrenched nature of the problem. There very probably is no school along the coastland and in Linden which can boast that none of its teachers gives lessons.
We have all extended ourselves in considering the plight of teachers, and all public servants as a matter of fact. Yet, the conduct of these teachers wilfully violates the rights of children, and is culpable in the failures and underperformance of students whose parents cannot afford to send them to lessons.
There can, in the public education system, be little or no improvement in children’s performance through their entire academic years, until the problem brought about by these teachers is addressed with some finality.
Editor, we can complain all we want about the failing grades of our children, but we also have to admit this can never change until we actively move to address and disband the group of teachers who give lessons, and move as well to remove those who have even acceded to positions of authority.
These persons, instead of being stewards of success for our children, are in fact the engineers of their failures, both academically and in the subsequent underachievement in their lives. Meantime, they themselves indulge and engorge on the opulence facilitated by their lessons fees.
Any proposal to address this problem could include a substantial increase in teachers’ salaries, accompanied by the diktat that teachers giving lessons and perverting the system should be summarily dismissed.
These teachers have systematically degraded the lives and futures of our children throughout the years, and will continue to do so once they remain in the public education system.
Asking teachers to give up their large lessons fees, which they very likely do not declare in their income tax files, can easily be considered a well-nigh impossible feat, and the task of supervising teachers who give lessons should not be entertained by the Ministry of Education.
It is an easy matter to investigate which teachers give lessons in schools: Ask them to sign to the statement that they do not give lessons, then proceed to investigate all of them.
The process may take some time, but it will most definitely result in an improvement in our children’s performance in the public education system throughout all the academic years. And this is time well spent.
Yours faithfully,
Lance Cumberbatch
