Education, failed culture and inspiration
thenassauguardian editorial
It was important that Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham took time to greet 12-year-old Anna Albury outside of the House of Assembly. The girl, who is blind, was crowned Primary School Student of the Year over 115 candidates from around the country.
“I am like just any other child. I do not look at myself as having a disability. I just happen to be blind,” said the sixth grader from Hope Town School on receiving the award.
Fully blind from birth, Anna could have been placed in the School for the Blind, but her parents, Theresa and Lambert Albury insisted that she be raised normally with other children. They wanted her to do well.
With their encouragement and the support of her teachers and classmates, Anna has maintained an outstanding 3.8 cumulative grade point average.
Here in New Providence in our public school system many children with two working eyes, two working ears, two working legs and two working arms are not doing nearly as well as Anna. And they benefit from a free education through grade 12.
The national D average in the Bahamas General Certificate of Secondary Education (BGCSE) exams masks the tremendous lack of achievement in our public school system. If the private schools are taken out of that calculation, our public school system would be in the F average range. No nation can be great with that level of underachievement.
Many blame the government of the day and the education bureaucracy for not doing more to reform the public education system. Certainly, there is more that can be done on the policy and funding sides of the equation to reform our system. However, a major part of the education problem in this country is our culture. Governments and civil servants cannot make Bahamian parents and guardians care about education.
Too many parents do not demand enough from their children. Too many Bahamians simply do not value the free education that is offered.
Concerned parents, relatives and guardians are crucial catalysts to success when it comes to educational achievement. When families care about education and hold children to standards, those children do better. When families only care about proms and making sure children are dressed in the trendiest clothes at the beginning of the school year, those children do not do as well.
Our culture has assumed too much of the foolish commercial nonsense from the two cultural centers we are between the United States and Jamaica. Knowledge of the latest rap or dancehall song is high, while the literacy and numeracy levels are low in The Bahamas.
We must do better.
Education is not merely about being prepared for the job market. It is about being a reasoned human being able to understand and function independently in the community you live in. It is also about being able to participate in the development and governance of that society in many different ways.
Too many Bahamians are too comfortable being uneducated. Too many Bahamians are too comfortable raising uneducated children. This must change.
What is especially problematic about this situation is that the free education system through grade 12 was something that was fought for.
The first black government of The Bahamas in 1967 had as its mandate ensuring that all Bahamians had access to education. In the ensuing decades schools were built across the country. Now, 44 years later, many of the parents and children who are the heirs to that movement show little interest in knowledge, learning and achievement.
Ignorant people are always ruled by smarter people. A people cannot be independent if they are dumb.
Bahamians must stop making excuses when it comes to learning and achievement. Yes, education reform is needed. But what is equally needed is concern about learning and knowledge by our people. A father who is not smart should, and can, have as a goal ensuring that his children do better than he did.
He can ensure that his children behave in school and do the work assigned; he can participate in the school’s Parent Teacher Association; he can seek tutoring for his children to ensure they have the technical assistance he cannot provide.
Anna Albury, a blind girl from a small school in the Family Islands, is doing well. She is inspirational. Born with a disadvantage, she still excels.
Mothers, fathers, relatives and guardians across The Bahamas must do more to ensure that their well-bodied children do better and take advantage of the opportunities given to them. We must care more about education and learning to ensure that we, Bahamians, have the capacity to govern ourselves and to command every sector of our economy.
Jul 30, 2011
thenassauguardian editorial
A political blog about Bahamian politics in The Bahamas, Bahamian Politicans - and the entire Bahamas political lot. Bahamian Blogger Dennis Dames keeps you updated on the political news and views throughout the islands of The Bahamas without fear or favor. Bahamian Politicians and the Bahamian Political Arena: Updates one Post at a time on Bahamas Politics and Bahamas Politicans; and their local, regional and international policies and perspectives.
Showing posts with label private schools Bahamas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label private schools Bahamas. Show all posts
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Union of Tertiary Educators of the Bahamas (UTEB) members need a serious reality check
UTEB members need serious reality check
tribune242 editorial
WITH desperate parents having to transfer their children from private schools to an overcrowded public school system where there is now no room for them, we get news that members of the College of the Bahamas' teachers union are still not comfortable with their salaries.
At a time like this when hard working Bahamians -- who do not have the luxury of long summer vacations as do teachers -- are struggling to make ends meet and are forced to adjust to the realities of a tight economy, we have teachers, who should be leading by example, bleating about dissatisfaction with their own salaries. Where is the College to get the funds -- raise the fees of struggling students? These teachers should be thankful that they have a job - many Bahamians today are jobless, while others are out on the highway flashing phone cards for sale -- anything to make a few dollars to keep body and soul together. In the meantime, these elite teachers with full job security have the nerve to complain that they do not have enough.
"We feel like the salary package they have offered us really doesn't show us any respect as professionals," one union source told a Tribune reporter yesterday.
"It doesn't respect the work we do. We are talking about the persons who are educating the people who are driving national development.
"We think it really insults us what they have offered us and that they should rethink their position."
We wonder who was disrespecting contractor Charles Nottage who in better times could afford to send his daughter to a private school. Today he is faced with the reality that he can no longer afford this luxury for his child. Mr Nottage told The Tribune that for the past four years his daughter was in a private school. He dreaded the thought of having to move her to a government school, "but it is a necessity right now," he said.
However, he still does not "know what to do" because government schools are so overcrowded that he can find no place for her even there.
How are hard working Bahamians, who at present cannot afford to send their children to private schools, going to find the funds to pay teachers for higher education? If the COB union says the College Board is disrespecting its teachers, then who is respecting Bahamians like Charles Nottage who cannot afford private education for his child?
To make this statement about disrespect shows that these teachers have no sensitivity to the times in which we all live. They must be on a planet of their own creation. And yet people, like Mr Nottage, are willing to face reality and step down until conditions in the country change to give them an opportunity to again start their upward climb.
These are the hard working Bahamians who adjust to hard times and will survive. Those with the attitude of some of these teachers will be left floundering in their own importance. Eventually they get nowhere.
Earlier in the year the College announced that it could not agree to the demands of the Union of Tertiary Educators of the Bahamas (UTEB), which would amount to an average increase of $11,500 per faculty member.
The union had demanded a reduction in workload for its teaches with an increase in pay ranging from 16 per cent to more than 19 per cent, for a total salary increase of 17.5 per cent.
The union seems to have something backward here. Business people are accustomed to paying more for more work -- not more for less. These teachers had better be sent back to school to get their maths in the right order. "The union's $11 million financial package would immediately add $8 million to the College's already overstretched budget and over $3 million annually thereafter," the College said.
The matter went to arbitration with both sides agreeing that they would accept the arbitrators' decision.
The arbitration committee, headed by St Matthew's Anglican Church rector Father James Palacious, said that neither side of the dispute would get exactly what they wanted.
However, when it came to UTEB's financial package, said the arbitrators, it would have been "very reasonable under normal circumstances," however in the end the committee had to adhere to the "economic reality." The committee referred to budget cuts and a still struggling economy. The teachers did not get what they wanted.
Despite this in today's Tribune UTEB president Jennifer Isaacs-Dotson has announced, unless the union gets a signed agreement, it is reserving its right to take a strike vote on Monday when COB is scheduled to open after the summer recess. Do they not have a signed agreement because the salary packet offered fails to show the respect they think their due? Have they rejected it?
Should they strike and create chaos for students on Monday, the College should be closed for a week with no pay for teachers during this time so that they can get a glimmer of what the arbitrators meant when they said they would have to adhere to "economic reality."
We do not think that many Bahamians -- other than some politicians, who appear to be looking for any unrest upon which to capitalise -- will have any sympathy for Mrs Dotson and her UTEB.
August 20, 2010
tribune242 editorial
tribune242 editorial
WITH desperate parents having to transfer their children from private schools to an overcrowded public school system where there is now no room for them, we get news that members of the College of the Bahamas' teachers union are still not comfortable with their salaries.
At a time like this when hard working Bahamians -- who do not have the luxury of long summer vacations as do teachers -- are struggling to make ends meet and are forced to adjust to the realities of a tight economy, we have teachers, who should be leading by example, bleating about dissatisfaction with their own salaries. Where is the College to get the funds -- raise the fees of struggling students? These teachers should be thankful that they have a job - many Bahamians today are jobless, while others are out on the highway flashing phone cards for sale -- anything to make a few dollars to keep body and soul together. In the meantime, these elite teachers with full job security have the nerve to complain that they do not have enough.
"We feel like the salary package they have offered us really doesn't show us any respect as professionals," one union source told a Tribune reporter yesterday.
"It doesn't respect the work we do. We are talking about the persons who are educating the people who are driving national development.
"We think it really insults us what they have offered us and that they should rethink their position."
We wonder who was disrespecting contractor Charles Nottage who in better times could afford to send his daughter to a private school. Today he is faced with the reality that he can no longer afford this luxury for his child. Mr Nottage told The Tribune that for the past four years his daughter was in a private school. He dreaded the thought of having to move her to a government school, "but it is a necessity right now," he said.
However, he still does not "know what to do" because government schools are so overcrowded that he can find no place for her even there.
How are hard working Bahamians, who at present cannot afford to send their children to private schools, going to find the funds to pay teachers for higher education? If the COB union says the College Board is disrespecting its teachers, then who is respecting Bahamians like Charles Nottage who cannot afford private education for his child?
To make this statement about disrespect shows that these teachers have no sensitivity to the times in which we all live. They must be on a planet of their own creation. And yet people, like Mr Nottage, are willing to face reality and step down until conditions in the country change to give them an opportunity to again start their upward climb.
These are the hard working Bahamians who adjust to hard times and will survive. Those with the attitude of some of these teachers will be left floundering in their own importance. Eventually they get nowhere.
Earlier in the year the College announced that it could not agree to the demands of the Union of Tertiary Educators of the Bahamas (UTEB), which would amount to an average increase of $11,500 per faculty member.
The union had demanded a reduction in workload for its teaches with an increase in pay ranging from 16 per cent to more than 19 per cent, for a total salary increase of 17.5 per cent.
The union seems to have something backward here. Business people are accustomed to paying more for more work -- not more for less. These teachers had better be sent back to school to get their maths in the right order. "The union's $11 million financial package would immediately add $8 million to the College's already overstretched budget and over $3 million annually thereafter," the College said.
The matter went to arbitration with both sides agreeing that they would accept the arbitrators' decision.
The arbitration committee, headed by St Matthew's Anglican Church rector Father James Palacious, said that neither side of the dispute would get exactly what they wanted.
However, when it came to UTEB's financial package, said the arbitrators, it would have been "very reasonable under normal circumstances," however in the end the committee had to adhere to the "economic reality." The committee referred to budget cuts and a still struggling economy. The teachers did not get what they wanted.
Despite this in today's Tribune UTEB president Jennifer Isaacs-Dotson has announced, unless the union gets a signed agreement, it is reserving its right to take a strike vote on Monday when COB is scheduled to open after the summer recess. Do they not have a signed agreement because the salary packet offered fails to show the respect they think their due? Have they rejected it?
Should they strike and create chaos for students on Monday, the College should be closed for a week with no pay for teachers during this time so that they can get a glimmer of what the arbitrators meant when they said they would have to adhere to "economic reality."
We do not think that many Bahamians -- other than some politicians, who appear to be looking for any unrest upon which to capitalise -- will have any sympathy for Mrs Dotson and her UTEB.
August 20, 2010
tribune242 editorial
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