Reducing time in schools

At this mid-morning meeting with Minister Anthony Garcia, executive members of NAPSA also suggested working toward an integrated programme to develop after-school care by members of community (some of whom would wish to leave by 4 pm). Presumably to get home by dark because of social violence.

The obvious conclusion is that there is a progressive transformation of the very idea of childcare.

First of all, the primary caregivers, educators and models have shifted from parents and teachers and have now moved to community.

With the reduced lunch break (to better allow teachers to prepare), primary schoolchildren will spend less time in school and less time at home.

Apparently, it is envisaged that concerned (or should it be committed) community caregivers will take up the slack. Children will be at such facilities at an earlier stage. We are of course talking about primary schoolchildren, that is, children from the age of five to 11 years usually.

At this same meeting and on the heels of many commentaries that I recall on the subject immediately following the last SE A exam, the executive of NAPSA also discussed the Secondary Entrance Assessment Examination.

There seems to have been no suggestion that the distribution of children across districts, social classes or abilities should be changed. Or, indeed, that the whole thing should just be made obsolete. No. Instead private schools will be the model for a proposed change in the matter of how many hours children spend at school, and the status quo will remain the same.

If this suggestion is implemented, and if this “integrated” model of day care does not work, parents and society will simply have to bear the consequences. Since most average wage earners probably cannot afford extra day-care fees, there will no doubt be a rise in the instances of violence, or indiscipline, caused simply by neglect.

Alternatively, the pressure on young parents will grow and the frustration already evident in our society will increase. The matter is simple, since in many homes both parents work fulltime, or indeed there may be only one parent — usually the mother — and the cost of bringing up children and ensuring that they are well looked after is simply already too high.

While teachers are not babysitters, they do share a burden of responsibility for teaching moral, social and cultural values. As society changes, obviously these issues have to evolve. But is the solution a shorter school day? Are there no other mechanisms given the level of research and the committees set up over the years to look into school violence and an increasingly indisciplined and violent society? The fact is that over many years successive governments have discussed and paid for policy assessments and research that might lead to potential change, in fact exactly as the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Social Development and Family Services, Jacinta Bailey-Sobers, has suggested in another headline news item. She “challenges” public servants to “take the time to go over the many research studies, which have been produced at great expense by Government and determine what policies could come out of them.” The issue of course is more than policy formulation. It is about implementation. But she is right.

All those many documents collecting dust speak to something deeply sinister and rotten at the core. They speak to a deep-seated desire to resist change and to pretend all the while that things are getting better.

Bailey-Sobers noted the research into disability matters as examples of these failures to formulate policies. Research by institutions such as the UWI should provide considerable fodder to enable change. But we see no change in actual budgets or personnel or even training and certainly not facilities.

But to go back to primary schools, how many commentators have pointed out the relationship between societal violence and a school exam system that creates cartels of and for the elite and that marginalises both those with little incentive to learn and those who face challenges to learning? Instead of taking on board the considered opinions and the research into violence and marginalisation, a union is recommending that the State shorten the time spent in school and place the burden of responsibil - ity on those very communities which are already hard-pressed to nurture and protect their young.