Whining over student attendance post-mas

It seems to be part of the PNM Carnival ritual. I wonder just how realistic or sincere it is.

Garcia disclosed that 81 percent of secondary school students and 74 percent of primary school students stayed away from classes last Ash Wednesday.

According to his ministry, students’ average attendance at the secondary level was 18.28 percent this year, compared with 22.8 percent last year. At the primary level, it was 26.3 percent as against 31 percent last year. At the same time, the average attendance of secondary school teachers was 77.6 percent and 81.2 percent for primary schools.

The minister also reportedly queried the poor representation at the schools’ chutney soca competition by students of some of the Hindu schools.

Today, it seems to me that schoolchildren are asked to engage in Carnival events that closely mirror adult competitions. And these events are school-based and presumably exert some degree of pressure on both the teachers and students and, by extension, parents, to have students participate in several of these tiring events.

Furthermore, there are child soca artistes and children participating in both the adult and children’s pan competitions. I would wager that teenage students participate just as vigorously as their adult counterparts in all aspects of the Carnival — including perhaps alcohol consumption and sex. After all, we are told that it is integral to “our culture.” Garcia’s Government has exhibited much zeal in pointing to absenteeism among students following the Carnival. That problem is perhaps as pervasive among the adult workforce as it is among students.

The Ash Wednesday Maracas cool-down has been assimilated into “our culture” as much as the national instrument.

It is fair to ask whether absenteeism is more prevalent among public sector workers than those employed in the private sector. If this is normative behaviour among the adult workforce and has become a “cultural” norm, is he not being disingenuous to the point of hypocrisy, to demand different standards from adolescents? Clearly, he cannot turn a blind eye to adult public servants while singling out their children. There has been much talk of “elitism” and the absence of “equity” regarding access to quality education. Stemming from this, TT Unified Teachers Association and other key stakeholders have been bashing the infamous Concordat arrangement as the principal instrument of this “inequity.” Hardly anything has been said of existing deficits within the government-run school system.

Eighty-five percent of students in denominational (prestige) schools come from two-parent homes while in the case of government- run schools the figure is 50 percent. As if to stack the odds against these latter children further, denominational schools are single-sex schools as opposed to co-educational State-run schools.

Research here has shown clearly that single-sex schools perform better.

Minister Garcia’s apparent disingenuous concern over post-Carnival student attendance amounts to no more than a ritualistic whine. It represents but a part of a far deeper and more complex societal dysfunction that PNM governments have been nurturing over their decades presiding over a rudderless cultural evolution. But, say what.

The youth of today are the revellers of tomorrow. Should we be concerned? Steve Smith via email