Bdos: More shame, the decline of Caribbean education

It's the same type of problem throughout the region. I'm inclined to think that the Caribbean, instead of retaining the strict disciplinary model that has served it well since the turn of the 20th century, abandoned that model to follow every politically correct wind that blows from the north and from across the Atlantic. What the U.S. and the U.K. can afford to put up with in their schools, Caribbean countries cannot. For, without education, too many countries, already with unemployment problems, will have even higher rates of unemployables. This is part of the article.

The Ministry would recall that discipline – or lack thereof – had its most sensational defining moment in 1995 when the principal of Coleridge & Parry School spoke out against inefficient teachers and children’s drift into disobedience and rudeness that since mushroomed out of control in other schools.

Like Ministry personnel, principals and teachers know what is at stake: their own professional comfort and perhaps their physical safety as well.

Remarkably, the Ministry played a pivotal role in the fiasco at C-P where, instead of supporting the principal’s call for better teacher performance and his efforts to instil discipline, it allowed political expediency to dictate that he be removed from his post. The relevant teachers union called for his resignation.

That, too, was a triumph for elements within this society who are either too short-sighted, too ignorant of their proper function or are possessed of an excessively liberal outlook that bodes ill for national well-being.

When an exemplar of the C-P principal’s stature and calibre is hounded out of office, others of similar standing and dedication, and teachers under their jurisdiction can have little confidence that they are free to do what they are paid to do without being victimised in like manner.

Reassurances from the Ministry of Education that schools are vested with the authority to make students conform would be worth a whole lot more if it were accompanied by a declaration that it intends not to follow the same path of “political correctness” that left the C-P principal to fend for himself.

That hands-off attitude is helpful only to an obnoxious, rebellious minority whose freedom to behave as they please – thanks to weak-kneed officialdom – is poisoning the education system.

Conscientious teachers are terrified of verbal or physical abuse by uncouth children, and similar attacks or litigation by parents. There is no way out of the blackboard jungle that permissiveness created, unless the State jettisons “political correctness” and stops trying to appease miscreants.

Education truly cannot occur in the absence of discipline. It's high time that Caribbean ministries of education required parents to sign a consent form that would protect schools from ridiculous lawsuits for disciplinary matters regarding attendance, performance, behavior, and the like. Instances of Caribbean teachers acting like the Guyanese one who broke a child's hand with a table leg are extremely rare, and teachers should not be protected from lawsuits for behavior that is felonious. Moreover, the system has an abundance of parents who, acting as though they are in the U.S., file suit when teachers attempt to impose discipline, either via corporal punishment or failing exam marks. Whatever the ministries do, the entire Caribbean region must know that the decline in education performance must be attributed in some part to this parent, and in some cases, teacher supported hampering of the schools' effort to establish and maintain the required discipline and order.