Brother Michael 'cure-alls' will heal us not

April 03, 2002
By Bukka Rennie

How is it possible that someone who has been a motivated, inspired educator for so long be so wrong? Brother Michael Samuel, retiring principal of Presentation College, San Fernando, after some 42 years, has expressed to the nation what he has come to know after so long in the teaching business. And he has advanced what he has come to know as palliatives and cure-alls to the many ills that have wrought havoc to our present education system.

His proposed cure-alls can be listed as follows:

Let educators of the denominational schools develop a moral code for schools and do not allow these educators who know best to be stymied by politicians.

In fact, he suggested that the failure of the PNM is to allow them to develop such a moral code back in the 60s and 70s was "partly responsible for the violence in schools" today.

Reintroduce corporal punishment when and where necessary but never "an abuse of the punishment" Build more tech-voc schools than grammar schools since as he said "... in any community there will be a percentage of students who will not be able to absorb grammar education, there will always be those who must be labourers and we should cater for those in the system.

And lastly, there should be gender separation at the secondary level, the claim here being that girls tend to out-perform boys, which tends to engender a sense of low self-esteem among males.

There is no desire here to doubt the sincerity of Brother Michael.

How can you question one who has put on the table 42 years of direct involvement in a profession out of love and commitment to the development of young charges?

But that is precisely the problem. He has engaged for 42 years like the proverbial ostrich with his head buried in the sand, without ever once questioning the environment in which he performed or far less the tools with which he performed.

It is always easy to blame the politicians, they have become our favourite whipping boys, but we are just as guilty as them in our failure to examine social phenomena rigorously.

Long ago the society and the world in which we existed was quite simple and straightforward.

The pace was much slower. Children within the education system, at all levels, were much more readily able to digest and inculcate information placed before them at that slower and more measured pace.

Today, the world is much more complicated, the relationships with which children have to contend are much more complex, and the speed with which they have to come to terms with information is so swift that suddenly we are discovering there are thousands of children in mid-stream of the education system who are unable to "process language", the key to communication, and therefore have great difficulty reading.

Why, as the schools become bigger, the world and the system of education become more complex and more fast-paced, we are discovering more and more children falling through the cracks and in need of remedial training and special attention?

Why? And why has that not told us something?

Education first and foremost is not about putting in some stuff into someone's head, it is more about pulling out human potential, human possibilities and capabilities that lie deep within.

That is what the "Comprehensives" were supposed to be about, and St George's College, Barataria, the Pilot Comprehensive, in its early years, before it was corrupted culturally, did better percentage-wise that QRC, CIC and Bishops, and St Georges was co-ed.

How many of us know that?

This approach to education, as being a process of bringing out potential and allowing all to interpret and challenge their own environment, is one thing the postulators and defenders of the elitist system dear to the likes of Brother Michael never seem to understand.

The denominational schools are overrated as the teaching staff are overrated.

If you select out of the multitude a few students who prove best able to adapt to the system as organised and you place these few in one environment, there is little creative application required of the staff therein to bring academic success.

Obviously, there will be little or no problems of discipline. Such students will always be focused and regurgitate whatever is placed before them and spoon-fed to them.

Where their weaknesses will show up is in the world of work when they prove unable to think divergently and be original in their application of theoretical formulation.

Listen to all the schools and colleges who boast today about the successes of their charges and try to figure how many of their charges ever attain the status of being considered genuine intellects. Very, very few, if any at all.

Lloyd Best is correct. It is the ones who come "first in test" in this educational system who are the biggest problem.

They are thrown up as social leaders, managers and captains of industry, but cannot formulate new paradigms to provide the society with new, native directions.

If the book did not say it, they will never know it. It is, too, the discards of the education system, those who could not be accommodated therein, the labourers, according to Brother Michael, to whom we shall have to turn, eventually.

More anon!