Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

The rea­son girls con­tin­ue to out­per­form boys in ex­am­i­na­tions at all lev­els is be­cause their brain cells ma­ture at a faster rate. Ac­cord­ing to Ja­maican-born guid­ance coun­sel­lor, Camille Swapp, it was crit­i­cal to ex­am­ine and un­der­stand the bi­o­log­i­cal un­der­pin­nings as­so­ci­at­ed with learn­ing, since re­search showed that a neu­ron found in the cor­tex re­gion of the brain was re­spon­si­ble for learn­ing.

Last month, two girls copped first place in the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion. Swapp, who is a trained guid­ance coun­sel­lor and UWI grad­u­ate, whose the­sis fo­cused on brain de­vel­op­ment, re­cent­ly shared her opin­ions and rec­om­men­da­tions on the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem with the Sun­day Guardian. Swapp, a moth­er of two, said there was a need for change in the syl­labus.

Speak­ing pas­sion­ate­ly about the is­sue at her home in San­ta Mar­gari­ta, St Au­gus­tine, she said, "Ei­ther they make the syl­labus more in line with the age group now, be­cause they are tak­ing five-year-olds in In­fant One, or the bet­ter thing to do might be to change the en­trance age in­to schools to an old­er child en­ter­ing In­fant One." She said it was crit­i­cal to do so, be­cause when she did her the­sis on de­vel­op­men­tal­ly ap­pro­pri­ate prac­tices to pro­mote joy­ful learn­ing, it showed that five-year-olds took two terms to set­tle down.

"I looked at a re­search group from a pri­vate pri­ma­ry and a pub­lic pri­ma­ry school, and it was not­ed in the pub­lic schools that the five-year-olds took two terms to set­tle down be­cause they were so young, and the en­vi­ron­ment fright­ened them with bells go­ing off and not hav­ing care­givers to nur­ture them." She said five-year-olds were bet­ter served in a small­er en­vi­ron­ment, such as a pre-school or nurs­ery.

Licks for learn­ing

Girls ma­ture faster than boys be­cause of the chem­i­cal myelin. "We as­sume in the Caribbean, be­cause of our his­toric mod­el of ed­u­ca­tion, that on­ly a teacher makes you learn. "On­ly your ex­pe­ri­ences when you look and see things, fan­cy par­ent­ing or licks for learn­ing–that makes you learn. "But bi­o­log­i­cal­ly, they could look at the brain and know how learn­ing oc­curs."

Ac­cord­ing to her re­search, learn­ing oc­curred bi­o­log­i­cal­ly with a neu­ron found in the cor­tex re­gion of the brain. She said it was at­tached to "most of our very crit­i­cal things," such as mus­cle and vi­su­al move­ments. "Boys don't read and write ear­ly, be­cause myelin–the chem­i­cal re­spon­si­ble for at­ten­tion span–usu­al­ly comes in lat­er for most boys, but it comes in ear­li­er for girls.

"If you take chil­dren in­to school too ear­ly, be­fore those cells are ma­ture and ready for for­mal school­ing–which is sit­ting for long pe­ri­ods for read­ing and writ­ing–then you will mis­di­ag­nose. "You will not as­sess them prop­er­ly, be­cause na­ture has not done its work yet. "And that is why at the end, you will see girls seem­ing­ly look­ing more aca­d­e­m­ic be­cause of our en­trance age, and we don't re­al­ly talk much about mat­u­ra­tion of brain cells as­so­ci­at­ed with readi­ness."

Lack of in­fo

Lack of in­for­ma­tion in the teach­ers' train­ing col­leges and to par­ents about learn­ing bi­o­log­i­cal­ly was an is­sue that was nev­er dis­cussed. "This in­for­ma­tion is crit­i­cal for us to as­sess our his­toric prac­tices with how we do ex­ams, and at what age do we start as­sess­ing," Swapp said. She list­ed read­ing as an ex­am­ple. "We com­plain that there was a prob­lem about read­ing. Even Bar­ba­dos com­plains." Most chil­dren were taught phon­ics from age five to sev­en, but Swapp ques­tioned: "Do you know that the rules for phon­ics were bet­ter un­der­stood af­ter the age of sev­en?"

She said chil­dren could be ex­posed to read­ing and phon­ics, but should not be as­sessed crit­i­cal­ly un­til af­ter sev­en, be­cause most five-year-olds were busy play­ing, or cry­ing un­der­neath the desk. She said Scan­di­navia, where she once lived, showed low­er rates of read­ing prob­lems, be­cause they re­spect­ed readi­ness. "We more talk about stim­u­lat­ing the cells to make them ready, and we're go­ing to give them licks so they can read," Swapp said.

"Most chil­dren will not read prop­er­ly to the lev­el of as­sess­ment we do in the Caribbean un­til sev­en or eight years old, es­pe­cial­ly boys. We should not as­sess them, worse to be giv­ing them a na­tion­al test be­fore a cer­tain age. "This is bad, be­cause what hap­pens is that you are fu­elling pan­ic in your so­ci­ety for par­ents to give them ex­tra lessons, and when you dam­age the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem, this neu­ron for learn­ing, you get bad be­hav­iour. You get learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties too."

Sys­tem not lib­er­at­ing

Swapp said the T&T ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem was "more de­bil­i­tat­ing than lib­er­at­ing."

There were too many sad faces, too many adults say­ing they nev­er did well in school; too many who said they went to a bad school, and too many adults hit­ting their chil­dren be­cause of the school sys­tem.

She said many adults were break­ing re­la­tion­ships with the chil­dren be­cause of the school sys­tem. They lacked the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion about the learn­ing process. "I want to be the voice of the chil­dren. We must know that learn­ing is fun, and it is not fun if the teacher wants to leave the job and the par­ent feels so bur­dened to teach some­thing, or the learn­er feels so bur­dened to learn. "We must be hap­py to go to school.