Undeserved praise for Manning

THE EDITOR: So letter writer Lotlie Forde of Tunapuna believes that Education Minister Hazel Manning is the “best Education Minister we ever had.” Poor soul! Oh, how we rush to immortalise mediocrity. God help the children of Trinidad and Tobago. Being an employee of the Ministry of Education, Ms Forde was surely singing for her supper.

Perhaps she is too near to the seat of power to be objective. There has been so much chaos in the Ministry of Education since Ms Manning assumed duties. Nobody seems to be working. It is as if the Ministry is on auto-pilot while Ms Manning poses for the camera and spends a pretty penny on high-profile public relations. Under Ms Manning, the secondary schools building programme ground to a halt with only projects in progress when the UNC left office continued. The Swaha College scheduled for completion at the end of October, 2003 is not even halfway built. Book grants have been late and even undelivered in many cases. Several schools do not have the full complement of teachers and the curriculum is in a mess.

The physical condition of several school leaves much to be desired and the morale of teachers is at an all time low. The education system is marking time. Since the “best ever” Education Minister assumed duties, violence in schools is the worst ever. She has no answers, yet she stubbornly refuses to implement the strategies used by Dr Adesh Nanan and Kamla Persad-Bissessar to ensure the learning environment in schools remains intact. Ms Forde referred to mistakes Ms Manning had to correct when she took office. Poppycock! It appears to me that Ms Manning made the mistake of not continuing the strategies of Ms Persad-Bissessar which TTUTA’s Trevor Oliver is begging her to implement to bring back peace and tranquillity in our schools. Had she done that our education system would have been far more advanced than it is today.

Ms Forde seems to echo the foolish propaganda of the PNM, that the UNC’s policy of universal secondary education is responsible for the violence in our schools today. That is utter rubbish! Ms Persad-Bissessar had put in place plans for a revision of the curriculum on an on-going basis to deal with the slow learners in the universal secondary education projection. But, the PNM did not understand the vision of the UNC and was hellbent on returning to the backward state of leaving between 8,000 and 10,000 children out of the secondary school education loop. We must not allow the PNM to consign our children to the dung heaps due to their lack of vision. Public relations and full page colour ads will hasten the collapse of the education system.

HORACE WILSON
Fonrose Village
Poole