Some of this material was published recently in a series of five articles in the Express in November and December 2004.

Let us list some of the major problems we are now facing. No doubt each of us will have a different list of our problems so the list that I shall enumerate is my personal list of priority areas:

1. Crime

2. Poverty and the widening gap between rich and poor

3. Potential for ethnic divisions

4. Lack of insight into measures needed for sustainable economic growth

5. Poor leadership and management in the public and private sectors.

I have become convinced that these five major issues, which are inter-related, could so adversely affect our society as to result in a very poor quality of life for all.

Like others I have come to accept the thesis enunciated frequently by Lloyd Best that while many of us are academically high achievers we have been badly educated and therefore cannot think constructively about these problems. But there is another element to this and that is a materialism and selfishness which causes us to lack the motivation to tackle these issues even when we can think clearly about them and have the power to effect change.

I have further concluded that it is well nigh impossible to radically change the adult population and therefore see our solution in better educated successive generations that have higher ethical values than the present.

Since parenting is, in many instances, a part of the problem, I believe that to effect change, which would normally be the responsibility of parents, we also have to nurture a new generation of parents. These parents must be well-educated and with high ethical values and this will have to be achieved by better schooling. This means that we have to put a greater responsibility on the educational system and consequently on the teachers.

The effects of the education system on the economy and on our ability to manage and to produce effective leaders are more subtle and so I will now briefly discuss the economic situation and will refer later to the problems of management and leadership.

Our present economy rests heavily on oil and natural gas. And we can be assured of at least 15 or 20 years of plenty from that source. In that regard our situation is quite different to that of the other Caribbean countries and perhaps different to many other developing countries.

Indeed this circumstance is both our present strength and could be our long-term weakness. For since these are finite assets the certainty is that at some time they will be depleted. And when that time arrives the chaos that will ensue will make the recession in the 1980s look like a picnic. But if one reads the 2004/2005 Budget presentation, in spite of all the fine words about diversification of the economy, there are no proposals we can point to that will transform the economy.

Yet our decision-makers include perhaps brilliant economists, who no doubt would have placed high up in the world at A-Levels. Recently the Cambridge Examination Syndicate has started a public relations campaign of rewarding such performance in this country by publishing “world” rankings in its A-Level examinations.

This is misleading us into thinking that our education system is performing well. We need only to look at the CXC passes in English and Mathematics to understand the extent of the under-performance generally. In addition a number of students are not allowed to sit the examination as their schools would have pre-judged that they would not pass.

So the problem must lie in our education system that produces persons who are brilliant at reproducing knowledge, which they have imbibed but who have not been nurtured to think and act independently. This results partly from our obsession with examinations and the award of scholarships.

I believe that there are three basic issues we are not tackling as well as we should and they are:

1. The ability to think clearly and logically

2. The development of ethical values

3. Self-confidence, particularly of our male youths.

If we look at the output from our school system it is clear that the system as a whole is failing. How do we intervene to effect improvements? We must insist that as soon as practicable:

1. All teachers must have professional (pedagogical-that is, the science of teaching) training, in addition to their subject matter education, before they enter a classroom to teach.

2. Recruitment for training for entry into the teaching profession should be in the main at the end of secondary school and not after obtaining a university degree when they may apply for teaching posts if they cannot obtain any other employment in their chosen field of study.

Teacher training

To produce a sufficient number of trained secondary school teachers the Catholic Church should urge the Government to provide a number of scholarships for training teachers to be awarded after a careful selection process and not solely on the basis of an academic merit list.

These should be available for a four-year programme to combine subject matter study (Chemistry, English etc.) with pedagogy. I believe that primary school teachers do a two-year programme at the Teachers' Training Colleges and this should be the basic minimum requirement before anyone is appointed as a primary school teacher. Intervention needs to be at the level of the educational institutions that are training the teachers. These are the University of the West Indies (UWI) and the Teachers' Colleges.

UWI has for many years offered a Bachelor in Education (BEd) degree in Jamaica . At UWI, St Augustine the BEd is only offered in specialised areas and these are: Administration, Primary Education and Early Childhood Care but not in the range of subjects that are taught in our secondary schools.

Further at St Augustine there is a part time postgraduate Diploma in Education (Dip Ed) that should be a full time programme and, in addition to a first degree, should be the minimum requirement for appointment as a secondary school teacher.

It amazed me to discover that since both the diplomas offered by the teacher training colleges and the postgraduate Diploma in Education offered by UWI are in-service programmes they cannot be taken before starting to teach! Why is UWI ( St Augustine ) not offering the same qualifications as in Jamaica ?

I would very much like to hear discussion on the adequacy of the two-year teachers' diploma for primary school teachers. Should not the teachers' training colleges be a part of the College of Science , Technology and Applied Arts of Trinidad and Tobago (COSTATT) or the University of Trinidad and Tobago offering at least Associate degrees? Or should they not, as in Jamaica , offer UWI qualifications?

We must ensure that the pedagogy which is taught at these institutions would allow the transformation of our schools to modern institutions preparing students to address problems by rational, logical thinking since the world is changing year by year.

We must change the authoritarian approach to teaching that is no longer relevant to us as an independent country.

For training of teachers already in the service a systematic programme should be set up for training at degree level and post-graduate diploma (full-time) to commence when the scholarship holders referred to above return in four years time.

At the moment, attendance at the in-service Dip Ed programme causes disruption in the schools through the absence of teachers. A similar programme should be put in place for primary school teachers.

More next week