There was a vibrant academic life before 1992
October 23, 2011 | By KNews.
Everybody wants to look good in the eyes of the beholder. Women put on make-up, wear fancy, sometimes revealing clothes and hairstyles that are designed to catch the eye.
Men are no different. They cut their hair in unimaginable ways, wear eye-catching clothes, use colognes that are bound to attract the most harmless child and they speak in volumes that are bound to reach the ear of the least attentive.
And this behaviour is not confined to Guyanese. It is the same all over the world. The more garish the get-up, the greater the attention. Then there are people who try to make more of themselves than they are. Some regale themselves with achievements that are often far removed from the truth. So it was that I became annoyed when I heard Education Minister Shaik Baksh boasting that in the field of education, nothing much happened prior to 1992.
I am a product of the pre-1992 era and so were the many doctors, teachers, national leaders like the bankers, the economists and accountants, the scientists who are today responsible for the many things we take for granted. There were also the reporters who produced a newspaper with the kind of language that has long disappeared from the minds of the people who now produce the news and who have the older folks wondering at the death of the English language.
There was Minister Baksh talking about the very low pass rate prior to 1992 and I sat wondering where I lived during this time when people were failing all these examinations. Those were the days when schools had a preponderance of Mathematics and English and foreign language teachers. Whether these people were trained in the post-1992 era and travelled back in time to teach me is a mystery.
Just about every school had a science teacher. Queen’s College, Bishops’ High School, Berbice High School, St Stanislaus College, St Rose’s; and latterly President’s College had their quota of teachers of every caliber and for every subject.
I remember when President’s College got a pass grade at the then GCE (or was it CXC) that appeared to be superior to the grades secured by the students of Queen’s College. I wrote way back then that President’s College must indeed be the School of Excellence.
Immediately, people like Justice Aubrey Bishop and a few other seniors who once attended Queen’s College took me to task. No one can tell me that the pass rates were as ridiculous as Minister Baksh made them out to be. Logic would tell me that a school with its complement of teachers would not do worse off than a school that is struggling to find teachers for the various subjects.
Unless Minister Baksh is contending that these teachers were merely bodies in place to say they are teachers, then surely the fail rate he put forward to the audience at the Awards ceremony on Thursday is inaccurate.
It cannot be that the four percent passes in Mathematics at 1992 could have produced the current crop of people who now manage the affairs of the country.
I distinctly recall the numerous Guyanese doctors who are now serving in foreign lands. I did not like the idea that they had taken their services to foreign lands although the country had spent money on them. Some of them are recruited from time to time to aid in technical services that we have not been offering. Surely these could not have been the failures from the pre-1992 era.
The teachers who have been preparing the post-1992 students came out of the pre-1992 era. Many others have left these shores and if one were to do a head count, one would find that they number in the hundreds. I graduated with more than 100 of them way back in 1969. They could not have been the four per cent that Mr Baksh spoke about.
It hurts to hear the comments about the bad days when education was surely not at a premium. I saw the products and I worked with them. The major enterprises all have people who came out of the pre-1992 era and they all hold or held senior positions. They were the ones who are still responsible for the success of these enterprises.
I dare Minister Baksh to tell me that President Bharrat Jagdeo was a product of the post-1992 era as he himself was surely not. The people who taught at the University of Guyana way before 1992 could in no way be considered failures.
As I said, it is easy to parade as though life began yesterday. Even older men pretend that they are younger than they are because they want to be noticed.
I admit that these days children are passing more subjects than their counterparts did way back when. But that is because some of the subjects were never considered as examination subjects. Who would have considered Office Procedure, Principles of Business, Principles of Accounts, Needlework, Cooking and the like as examination subjects?
There were people who wrote Scripture back in my days, but by the time I was ready to write exams that subject had been thrown through the window.
By no stretch of the imagination can one teacher shuttling between four schools produce the kind of results of a teacher who is confined to a single school. Let Minister Baksh look at the Advanced Level passes that led to Guyana Scholarships and he would find that a large number of Guyanese were writing Pure Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, and the gamut of science subjects. These must be the failures of which he spoke.
Dr Cheddi Jagan needed to have a basic knowledge of Science, but Mr Baksh would argue that his knowledge was acquired in the colonial days. So, I ask him to check the people who are forty years and older. He reportedly says that he has the records. Let him check.
Do not embellish. I say that to young reporters and I say that to Minister Baksh.
October 23, 2011 | By KNews.
Everybody wants to look good in the eyes of the beholder. Women put on make-up, wear fancy, sometimes revealing clothes and hairstyles that are designed to catch the eye.
Men are no different. They cut their hair in unimaginable ways, wear eye-catching clothes, use colognes that are bound to attract the most harmless child and they speak in volumes that are bound to reach the ear of the least attentive.
And this behaviour is not confined to Guyanese. It is the same all over the world. The more garish the get-up, the greater the attention. Then there are people who try to make more of themselves than they are. Some regale themselves with achievements that are often far removed from the truth. So it was that I became annoyed when I heard Education Minister Shaik Baksh boasting that in the field of education, nothing much happened prior to 1992.
I am a product of the pre-1992 era and so were the many doctors, teachers, national leaders like the bankers, the economists and accountants, the scientists who are today responsible for the many things we take for granted. There were also the reporters who produced a newspaper with the kind of language that has long disappeared from the minds of the people who now produce the news and who have the older folks wondering at the death of the English language.
There was Minister Baksh talking about the very low pass rate prior to 1992 and I sat wondering where I lived during this time when people were failing all these examinations. Those were the days when schools had a preponderance of Mathematics and English and foreign language teachers. Whether these people were trained in the post-1992 era and travelled back in time to teach me is a mystery.
Just about every school had a science teacher. Queen’s College, Bishops’ High School, Berbice High School, St Stanislaus College, St Rose’s; and latterly President’s College had their quota of teachers of every caliber and for every subject.
I remember when President’s College got a pass grade at the then GCE (or was it CXC) that appeared to be superior to the grades secured by the students of Queen’s College. I wrote way back then that President’s College must indeed be the School of Excellence.
Immediately, people like Justice Aubrey Bishop and a few other seniors who once attended Queen’s College took me to task. No one can tell me that the pass rates were as ridiculous as Minister Baksh made them out to be. Logic would tell me that a school with its complement of teachers would not do worse off than a school that is struggling to find teachers for the various subjects.
Unless Minister Baksh is contending that these teachers were merely bodies in place to say they are teachers, then surely the fail rate he put forward to the audience at the Awards ceremony on Thursday is inaccurate.
It cannot be that the four percent passes in Mathematics at 1992 could have produced the current crop of people who now manage the affairs of the country.
I distinctly recall the numerous Guyanese doctors who are now serving in foreign lands. I did not like the idea that they had taken their services to foreign lands although the country had spent money on them. Some of them are recruited from time to time to aid in technical services that we have not been offering. Surely these could not have been the failures from the pre-1992 era.
The teachers who have been preparing the post-1992 students came out of the pre-1992 era. Many others have left these shores and if one were to do a head count, one would find that they number in the hundreds. I graduated with more than 100 of them way back in 1969. They could not have been the four per cent that Mr Baksh spoke about.
It hurts to hear the comments about the bad days when education was surely not at a premium. I saw the products and I worked with them. The major enterprises all have people who came out of the pre-1992 era and they all hold or held senior positions. They were the ones who are still responsible for the success of these enterprises.
I dare Minister Baksh to tell me that President Bharrat Jagdeo was a product of the post-1992 era as he himself was surely not. The people who taught at the University of Guyana way before 1992 could in no way be considered failures.
As I said, it is easy to parade as though life began yesterday. Even older men pretend that they are younger than they are because they want to be noticed.
I admit that these days children are passing more subjects than their counterparts did way back when. But that is because some of the subjects were never considered as examination subjects. Who would have considered Office Procedure, Principles of Business, Principles of Accounts, Needlework, Cooking and the like as examination subjects?
There were people who wrote Scripture back in my days, but by the time I was ready to write exams that subject had been thrown through the window.
By no stretch of the imagination can one teacher shuttling between four schools produce the kind of results of a teacher who is confined to a single school. Let Minister Baksh look at the Advanced Level passes that led to Guyana Scholarships and he would find that a large number of Guyanese were writing Pure Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, and the gamut of science subjects. These must be the failures of which he spoke.
Dr Cheddi Jagan needed to have a basic knowledge of Science, but Mr Baksh would argue that his knowledge was acquired in the colonial days. So, I ask him to check the people who are forty years and older. He reportedly says that he has the records. Let him check.
Do not embellish. I say that to young reporters and I say that to Minister Baksh.
