It’s that time of year again when the dreams of red-blood­ed Trinida­di­an par­ents of 11-year-old chil­dren turn to night­mares and their lives fill with anx­i­ety as they pon­der and won­der at the SEA ex­am, which they all would fail mis­er­ably if they had to take and which their chil­dren are sub­mit­ted to.

It’s no joke to say that any adult in T&T would fail the SEA ex­am. I have many par­ents who are teach­ers whom all agree that the SEA syl­labus is far too dif­fi­cult, is too de­pen­dent on mem­o­ry and that the main fo­cus of pri­ma­ry school ed­u­ca­tion is the SEA ex­am with lit­tle em­pha­sis on teach­ing chil­dren how to learn and to en­joy learn­ing. In­stead of in­formed won­der, dross re­gur­gi­ta­tion.

In May 2017, one teacher wrote in the news­pa­pers that “dur­ing my 18 years of teach­ing math­e­mat­ics at the sec­ondary school lev­el, I had nev­er en­coun­tered some of the math­e­mat­i­cal terms that ten and 11-year-olds were be­ing forced to learn”. She says she “had to re­sort to the dic­tio­nary to find some of those de­f­i­n­i­tions” and was “amazed to see some of the top­ics I was teach­ing pupils of Forms 1, 2 and 3, were al­so be­ing taught in Stan­dards 4 and 5”. Ex­tra­or­di­nary com­ments from an ex­pe­ri­enced, com­pe­tent teacher.

When Sci­ence was part of the Com­mon En­trance, pri­ma­ry school chil­dren were forced to learn med­ical school con­cepts. When these chil­dren en­tered med­ical school they had for­got­ten every­thing.

Chil­dren be­come so trau­ma­tised with the SEA that many end up in doc­tors’ of­fices com­plain­ing of “bel­ly pains” and “chest pains” and “headaches” and “lack­ing en­er­gy” and “cah sleep” and “con­sti­pat­ed”.

The on­ly things more con­sti­pat­ed than SEA can­di­dates are the minds of the of­fi­cials in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Af­ter I be­came Head of the Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Spe­cial Ed­u­ca­tion, I was shocked to learn that there were tech­ni­cal ad­vis­ers in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion who did not be­lieve in Spe­cial Ed­u­ca­tion and that in­clud­ed one Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion. They be­lieved there were chil­dren who were sim­ply ir­re­spon­si­ble. “These chil­dren refuse to learn. You can­not teach them! ”

One got the im­pres­sion they were in­ter­est­ed in aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed stu­dents and con­sid­ered any­thing else a waste of their time.

These were the peo­ple set­ting the stan­dards in the min­istry. Hope­ful­ly, most have re­tired al­though oc­ca­sion­al­ly one reads some­thing in the pa­pers that makes one doubt­ful.

So it’s not on­ly the SEA teach­ing set­up, it’s the en­tire ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem which is stuck in the colo­nial age, set up by the British years ago to fill their needs and now aban­doned by them while we wal­low in plat­i­tudes and old-time clichés, forc­ing stu­dents to mem­o­rise and be re­ward­ed with schol­ar­ships, and pun­ish­ing the tru­ly smart and in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic chil­dren with by­gone la­bels.

I’ve had schol­ar­ship win­ning med­ical stu­dents, so lack­ing in com­mon de­cen­cy, that they re­fused to ex­am­ine mal­nour­ished chil­dren be­cause “they too dirty” and then had the gall to re­port me to the dean who then had the gall to call me and ask why I had sus­pend­ed the stu­dent. No prize then for why I re­signed af­ter 18 years of teach­ing about half the doc­tors who now prac­tice in the coun­try.

Sim­ply lis­ten to what our Pres­i­dent said in Jan­u­ary 2019 about the ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem: “For six years I taught the course ‘Ethics, Rights & Re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the Le­gal Pro­fes­sion’. I was dis­ap­point­ed to find that a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of the stu­dents, among them schol­ar­ship win­ners and oth­er high achiev­ers, were lazy and dis­hon­est, had a sense of en­ti­tle­ment, and want­ed max­i­mum re­turn for min­i­mum ef­fort. It was clear these fail­ings of char­ac­ter had been car­ried over from their ear­li­er in­ter­ac­tion with the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem”.

What could be clear­er? The ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem, like so many oth­er sys­tems in the coun­try stinks and needs to be re­formed from the bot­tom up with par­ents and teach­ers tak­ing the lead. The bu­reau­crats in the MoE will not do it.