Fe­lipe Noguera

How can we fix the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, the school sys­tem, to end the cy­cle of pover­ty and crime which con­tin­ues to be re­pro­duced? "In the Caribbean, the school sys­tem has po­si­tioned it­self as the on­ly in­sti­tu­tion that works."So ob­serves Ja­maican ed­u­ca­tion­al guid­ance coun­sel­lor Camile Swapp, who con­tin­ues "in Scan­di­navia they po­si­tion their school sys­tem along with their med­ical sys­tem to lead in best prac­tices with di­et, putting child care at the cen­tre of all learn­ing".That the ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in the Caribbean has ne­glect­ed to study the re­pro­duc­tion of pover­ty is an in­dict­ment against ed­u­ca­tion in our so­ci­ety. Stu­dent vi­o­lence is not lim­it­ed to poor or work­ing class ar­eas; it has be­come a sub­cul­ture-not on­ly for con­flict res­o­lu­tion, but to prove that one is wor­thy among one's peers.

The chil­dren of the mid­dle class how­ev­er, usu­al­ly have par­ents who en­sure that they get high scores on ex­ams or be­cause they are ed­u­cat­ed, don't project the im­age of worth­less­ness on their chil­dren. All boys are at risk but the work­ing class and the un­der­class boys are not made ready for the chal­lenges they face when fa­thers are not present to of­fer prop­er role mod­els and they are neg­a­tive­ly re­in­forced with self im­ages that pre­dict fail­ure.Moth­ers, not un­der­stand­ing the boys, tend to be harsh­er with them and the girls tend to fall in love, have ba­bies and drop out of school once they don't feel val­ued. So how do we fix these dens of in­iq­ui­ty?

School in­fra­struc­ture, bro­ken toi­lets, class­rooms and sub­sti­tute teach­ers need the at­ten­tion of ter­tiary lev­el ed­u­ca­tion re­searchers and pol­i­cy mak­ers who go be­yond teach­ing sub­jects, re­search child de­vel­op­ment and how to make schools bet­ter.As small is­lands, Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos and the OECS must en­gage in the de­bate which shows child de­vel­op­ment in terms of progress of aca­d­e­m­ic prowess and blos­som­ing of per­son­al­i­ty, start­ing at pre-school, ac­cord­ing to in­sur­ance ex­ec­u­tive Ger­ald Hadeed.Where are the 4,000 chil­dren who drop out? Why do they drop out? Are teach­ers and par­ents aware of the role mod­els we of­fer? Un­der­stand­ing child­hood and the fact that like Liberia and now Libya, we are pro­duc­ing child sol­diers, mod­el­ling ag­gres­sion, must force us out of our com­pla­cen­cy to un­der­stand how the brain works at dif­fer­ent stages in hu­man de­vel­op­ment. Colo­nial ed­u­ca­tion gave us in­de­pen­dence, but it must be trans­formed to lib­er­ate us. Po­lice at the school gates pre­pare us psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly for the in­evitabil­i­ty of prison for our youth.

In the US, when stu­dents in fourth grade fail their stan­dard ex­ams, the num­ber failed is used to de­ter­mine how many new jail cells to build. The cyn­i­cism in that phi­los­o­phy can­not pre­pare our so­ci­ety to be com­pas­sion­ate, cul­tured, and hu­mane, much less be com­pet­i­tive in the in­ter­na­tion­al econ­o­my. Po­lit­i­cal will must gear its ef­fort to fix­ing the schools de­spite seem­ing­ly in­sur­mount­able chal­lenges and the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter needs every­one to join this ef­fort. As a con­se­quence of this trend, the ad­min­is­tra­tion of Mi­a­mi Dade Coun­ty Pub­lic Schools Su­per­in­ten­dent, Dr Rudy Crew, cre­at­ed a School Im­prove­ment Zone in the poor­est neigh­bour­hoods in the School Dis­trict.

What the 'Zone' did was to con­cen­trate fi­nan­cial and teach­ing re­sources in these ar­eas-pay­ing more mon­ey to teach­ers who worked there longer­hours, with in­cen­tives to teach­ers for im­proved aca­d­e­m­ic and be­hav­iour­al per­for­mance; short­er va­ca­tions and bet­ter fa­cil­i­ties.Track­ing the met­rics com­ing out of the Zone re­sult­ed in low­er­ing of crime and de­viant be­hav­iour and in Mi­a­mi Dade, the fourth largest school dis­trict in the US, be­ing se­lect­ed as a fi­nal­ist for the cov­et­ed Broad Prize for the most im­proved school dis­trict in the na­tion.

We have a glo­ri­ous op­por­tu­ni­ty to turn around our schools and chil­dren so that 15 to 25-year-olds are not killing each oth­er. To cap­ture this op­por­tu­ni­ty we must have in­for­ma­tion, da­ta on what con­sti­tutes good ed­u­ca­tion? What is the en­vi­ron­ment which must be cre­at­ed so that we un­der­stand how boys and girls de­vel­op­ment men­tal­ly and dif­fer­en­tial­ly and what we know about child de­vel­op­ment?If teach­ers are not will­ing to work and be mo­ti­vat­ed in de­pressed ar­eas, we must find the best who are will­ing and com­pen­sate them more for in­vest­ing them­selves in those with the great­est need.Ac­cord­ing to NYU Ed­u­ca­tion­al So­ci­ol­o­gist and au­thor Pro­fes­sor Pe­dro Noguera, the school sys­tem must lead the di­a­logue to cre­ate a brain rich en­vi­ron­ment for learn­ing, which in­cludes fix­ing the phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment in which the child learns, en­sur­ing that trained sub­sti­tute teach­ers are in class when nor­mal teach­ers are ab­sent.

Par­ents must not feel that they have to leave Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause their chil­dren are like­ly to fail. When the strong want to leave the pub­lic school sys­tem and move to the Cana­di­an and in­ter­na­tion­al sys­tems or mi­grate to the US, then what about the weak? We can change the sys­tem when the peo­ple at the grass roots have the in­for­ma­tion on what is best for child­hood and the sys­tem is re­spon­sive to the par­ents' ar­tic­u­la­tion of the chal­lenges they face in rais­ing their chil­dren.

Stu­dent vi­o­lence can be up­root­ed with as­sertive hu­man val­ues prac­ticed by par­ents and teach­ers and when the cur­ricu­lum em­braces these val­ues. The schools must al­so be used in the evenings for adult ed­u­ca­tion, par­ent acad­e­mies, which con­tin­ues ed­u­ca­tion -aca­d­e­m­ic, vo­ca­tion­al and pro­fes­sion­al com­pe­ten­cies as well as val­ues, which even those par­ents, may have missed as they were ei­ther preg­nant or im­preg­nat­ing at age 15.Ed­u­ca­tion re­lates to eco­nom­ic and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment and young peo­ple must ac­quire the skills to con­tribute to that de­vel­op­ment to em­pow­er their com­mu­ni­ties and take con­trol of their de­vel­op­ment. It's a bet­ter eco­nom­ic de­ci­sion to in­vest in ed­u­ca­tion than in pris­ons.

To view the be­gin­ning of a na­tion­al de­bate on this crit­i­cal is­sue, tune in to "Mak­ing a Dif­fer­ence in Our Eco­nom­ic Space" on CNC3 East­er Mon­day at 9.00 pm, where Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh, Guid­ance Coun­sel­lor Camille Swapp, NYU Pro­fes­sor Pe­dro Noguera and Busi­ness­man Ger­ry Hadeed join host Fe­lipe Noguera to weigh in on our fu­ture.