Education errors

“The theory determines what we can see,” Einstein once remarked. This saw kept running through my mind when, some weeks ago, I attended a lunch-time seminar put on by the Gender Studies Unit of UWI. The presentation by the three women researchers was titled “Children of Migration: A study of the Psycho-Social Status of Children in Trinidad whose Parents have Migrated.” The Inappropriate Capitals should have Warned Me what to Expect. I won’t embarrass the researchers by naming them, because I believe they are well-intentioned. But the fact that people with such mistaken ideas can affect policy at the Education Ministry is a worrisome thing. The researchers had interviewed children in a junior secondary school and, while much of the data they had amassed was useful, nearly all their conclusions were completely without foundation.

“It was found that children separated from parents because of migration were twice as likely as other children to have emotional problems although their economic status was improved,” they asserted. But at no point did they prove that there was causation and not merely correlation (and it was interesting that only the three men in the audience seemed sceptical of the conclusions). Mind you, causation would have been difficult, even impossible, to prove. Doing so would have required a personality analysis of the parents, not just the child, since it may be that it is a particular kind of parent who leaves their child in the care of others. If that parent passes on their personality traits to the child genetically (traits such as non-conscientiousness or an antagonistic attitude are 50 percent heritable), then that, not parental absence, is the true cause of the child’s problems.

The problem was, because they cleaved to wrong theories, the researchers didn’t even attempt to explore alternative factors where they could. For example, they did not break down their data to see if the Trinindian kids (who made up eight percent of the group of children with parents living overseas) had a higher rate of depression than the Trinafrican (who made up 37 percent of the sample) or mixed ones (29 percent), even though cursory evidence suggests that IndoTrinis are more prone to depression than AfroTrinis. Indeed, when I raised the point, the psychiatrist denied that genes were a significant factor in clinical depression: yet the link between genes and severe depression is established beyond reasonable doubt.

Similarly, when I suggested that their findings would have little merit unless they tracked the kids into young adulthood to see if the effects persisted, the head researcher said that many studies had proven that separation from parents in childhood had permanent effects. This is untrue on two counts. First, there aren’t “many studies”: prospective longitudinal surveys, which track people from youth to adulthood, are very expensive and very difficult to do. Secondly, the few such studies have found that childhood experiences do not carry into adulthood. “It has turned out to be difficult to find even small effects of childhood events on adult personalities, and there is no evidence at all of large — to say nothing of determining — effects,” writes psychologist Martin Seligman in his book Authentic Happiness.

Lastly, although the researchers found that many of the children were often moved between care-givers, they didn’t even attempt to do a correlation between this movement and levels of emotional problems: because their theory didn’t tell them that changing peer groups creates emotional instability for a child. Ironically enough, the researchers did make one correct recommendation despite their wrong ideas: strengthening the school so the child would have a stable environment. But the practical measures that strengthening entails must rest on correct ideas and, even before that, identification of the main problems in the school system. The latter has been well ventilated, most recently in the closing months of 2003 after the outbreaks of school violence then. Because it was mainly professional educators involved, the discussion was of a high standard.

Commentators such as School of Education lecturers Raymond Hackett and Winford James, Teachers Training College lecturer Samuel Lochan, retired teacher David Subran, Bishop Anstey principal Valerie Taylor and several others all weighed in with insightful analyses. In a discussion arranged by the TT Institute of the West Indies, Taylor focused on an education system designed for only the top 20 percent of students, as well as more immediate shortcomings such as dilapidated buildings, lack of materials and resources, and low teacher salaries. Lochan wrote on the lack of meaningful leadership in the school system, either from principals, teachers or TTUTA. Subran criticised the assumption that some students were competent to learn only technical subjects. But you can never get away from theory.

Lloyd Best, this country’s most educated man, asserted, “The challenge is to acknowledge that our crisis is institutional, deep-seated and not susceptible to being defused by any trite and pedestrian measures, however seemingly sensible and urgent.” The roots of our main problems in education go back 30 years; and it is not coincidental that this is exactly one generation. “The newer government secondary schools and especially the junior secondary schools of the 1970s had to carry the burden of the academically weak and most indisciplined students from the primary school system,” notes historian Carl Campbell in his book Endless Education. “No way has yet been found to establish parity of esteem between the older schools and the new secondary schools.” The Education Ministry has a plan to change this.

A Student and Staff Support Committee is to be established in all secondary schools. Measures include a student council; continuous professional development for staff; a prefect, house, and mediation system; clubs and interest groups; and a comprehensive guidance and counselling programme. Earlier this year, the Ministry took out an ad calling for about 30 guidance counsellors and two or three psychologists. But none of these measures will have the intended effects unless they are based on a solid foundation of good theory and rigorous research. Many of the proposed solutions are based to a great extent on folk wisdom, but folk wisdom only works for folk cultures. A modern society needs up-to-date, scientific ideas; and this brings me to one of the core reasons we are an underdeveloped country: the contempt so many laypersons and experts have for empirical thought.

E-mail: kbaldeosingh@hotmail.com
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