Schools need to be­come more of what they were in the past, which was an "in­sti­tu­tion" rather than an "or­gan­i­sa­tion." The school sys­tem in Trinidad as far as I'm con­cerned has be­come ex­treme­ly "one-sight­ed." The syl­labus is set to work with and com­ple­ment on­ly those who pos­sess aca­d­e­m­ic prowess or po­ten­tial. What about the slow learn­ers?

I was able to ob­serve all of this through­out my sec­ondary school life. The smart or promis­ing stu­dents were praised while the slow­er stu­dents were ba­si­cal­ly aban­doned as they fell be­hind. What we need is a sys­tem by which those stu­dents get in­di­vid­ual or group care. Don't spoon-feed them but give them the ex­tra push that they need. Al­so, bring back things like manda­to­ry mu­sic class­es, not on­ly up un­til Form 3 but up to Form 5.

A child with a gui­tar in his hand is less like­ly to end up do­ing fool­ish­ness in his free time. Have stu­dents do art as ex­tracur­ric­u­lar even if they didn't choose to it for CXC. Em­ploy dif­fer­ent meth­ods and be cre­ative. Let schools in the com­mu­ni­ty host and make avail­able to the youth art/mu­sic/sport work­shops. Whether once a day or once a week, it will make a dif­fer­ence.

Teach the chil­dren how to cope with the world. How to live. How to love life.

Joshua Brizan

Via e-mail