Economic power stems from education, not complacency

Most people — educationists as well as laypeople — assume a causal relationship between education and development.  The old adage, “To get a good job, you need a good education” was constantly echoed to my generation and is repeated, almost like a mantra by us to our children.

Do we stop to consider the type of education that we are advocating, uncritically to our children?  Has modern education kept abreast of the requirements for educated men and women to be able to survive, compete and thrive in the age of digital, global economic liberalisation? More specifically, to what extent have we in the Caribbean and in Trinidad and Tobago reflected on what we need and expect as the products of the educational process for the benefit of society? The Divine Teacher, Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba has described teaching as the noblest of professions.  He qualifies that statement, by noting that diligently pursued, teaching is a sacred path for self-realisation of the teacher because it entails the cultivation of selfless love and the showering and sharing of that love. Now of course the cynics among us may have forgotten when they were students how much a difference a teacher who showed an interest in our learning could make in that process. Conversely, I’m sure that many of us can relate to an experience where a teacher, for some reason or other, didn’t like us or our children and how much a “turn off” the impact of a negative attitude of the teacher had on our ability to absorb the lessons the teacher was imparting. It is said, “A bad pupil causes harm only to himself.  A bad teacher ruins the career of thousands.”

We will return shortly to the attitude of students in and outside the classroom.  But continuing on the qualities of a good teacher, Baba notes that a good teacher can mould the rising generation into self-confident, self-reliant, God-conscious persons.  His qualification for the respect and admiration of students is that she is the architect of happy homes, prosperous communities and peaceful nations.  This is because the teacher not only has to equip himself with the knowledge and skills to inform and instruct, but also the vision and insight, to inspire and transform. Teachers and parents should ask themselves how many teachers are known to exemplify the ideals, manners, behaviour and beliefs that can implant and impart humility, simplicity, morality, integrity and love in the hearts of their students. Such teachers can not only be beacons of love, truth and reverence, the pupils under their guidance and tutelage can encourage love in homes, radiation of courage, joy and hope. I can recall, as a youth confiding in a biology teacher that I wanted to study to become a physician.  That aspiration was completely abandoned when, after failing a biology exam, the teacher ridiculed me in front of the class saying, “Imagine he wants to be a doctor.”  It was only because I had parents who cared enough to encourage me to persist and the fact that I subsequently had teachers who saw something in my makeup to encourage the pursuit of excellence, that I was able to escape the fate of many of my less fortunate friends who encountered dead-end jobs, unemployment or crime.

Hence, the first basic aim of education must be moulding good character in the children under the charge of teachers.  It is useless to say that we are educating people to cram before exams and regurgitate what they’ve absorbed without digesting the subtle but positive values required for nation-building and training citizens and future leaders who are not strangers to truth and virtue.  Values such as determination, discipline, discrimination (between right and wrong; truth and falsehood) duty and devotion must form the cornerstone of the modern educational process. A second vital, but often underestimated aim of modern education is ensuring that the vocational preparatory aspects of the curriculum are relevant to the demands for skills and knowledge of the contemporary world of work.  Time honoured, core curricular subjects of mathematics, sciences, language, arts and humanities and social sciences have not been adequately upgraded or enhanced by exposure to new and relevant areas of study in primary, secondary and even tertiary academia. While one may be tempted to make the excuse that having computers in all primary and secondary schools to add value to the learning process and also resulting in computer literacy, is cost prohibitive, there is a mind-set which prevails in the society that regards the computer more as a scarce resource or even more of a status symbol than an indispensable pedagogical tool. In a global information society, the study of subjects such as telecommunications policy, strategic planning of information networks, the economics of bandwidth access and ownership and control of the means of communication,  would seem to be worthy of rigorous academic research and development.  Sadly, this is not the case.

Notwithstanding the articulation by the political leaders of the region of a vision for development in the new millennium, the pace of adjustment and educational transformation is too slow and the attitude of those responsible for that pace, is still too complacent for the aggressive competitive spirit required for the Caribbean to become serious contenders for equitable dispensation of global resources. In conclusion, this discussion has been introduced with the hope of sparking a debate on two crucial aspects of modern Caribbean education.  The first is the necessity of melding education with positive human values to increase the likelihood of producing caring and productive citizens. The second aspect is the need to subject the current syllabus of our primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions to a critical review, relative to the anticipated demands for relevant skills and appropriate tools that foster both cooperation and competitiveness for the strength of our economies.

The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of Guardian Life. You are invited to send your comments to guardianlife@ghl.co.tt