January 30, 2013 at 5:54 p.m.
Don't graduate students who should be held back
I am no expert on the bureaucratic manoeuvring and monitoring of the Department of Education. My heart is quite simply for the students. My concern is, are we now doing what we can in order to save another set of students as they, by the mass numbers, move from the Primary School to Middle School, and from the Middle School to the Senior Secondary School level?
My concern at the present is what I shall term "murderous graduations". Yes, murderous graduations. By this, I mean that we "educators" are knowingly allowing students to don caps and gowns or wear special clothing as they walk across the stage to receive their graduation certificates. Yet, when many arrive at their next place of learning, they will be in no way prepared for "higher learning".
Why are we calling students Honour Roll students at one level of education and they are failing at the next level? These "murderous graduations" are about pushing students through to the next grade or the next school as if they are a herd of animals, rather than teaching children until they are truly ready to pass to the next grade. This cannot be right.
We need to understand the P.U.S.H. reality.
Postpone Upward Step Honestly. Bermuda, I am so tired of hearing that to keep a child "back" is to harm him socially. Okay, and what harm do we do to the child who is pushed through with his friends only to drop out of school later or barely "survive" and suffer in the job market of Bermuda. Need we talk about how "tight" things are getting in this job market? Hotels are laying people off. Exempt companies are letting people go. Things will not be any easier for those we push to graduate.
You know what? There are principals who need to make more noise about this. Well, I guess as civil servants they cannot. So can you imagine the horror some principals experience when they realize they have received honour students from a school and that those precious honour students are experiencing a lot of difficulty. (Not the normal challenges, but they are struggling with academics that should be no problem for them).
How can principals sleep at night, knowing that they just gave a certificate to a child they know is going to flop and fail at the next level.
This is where we must be transparent. Indeed, the best parent at this point in our education system is transparent. We must realize that Prior Underachievers Suffer Horrifically (P.U.S.H.). Will someone Please Understand Student History (P.U.S.H.) and Please Under gird Struggling Hearts (P.U.S.H.).
There must be a minimum level of academic expectation at Primary 1. While every child is not an academic scholar, every child (not including those with I.E.Ps), should be able to reach a minimum acceptable level of learning before they get to Primary 2. Why would we let a child move to the next grade, when they have not successfully completed the first grade? We need to be honest with parents and parents need to be at a place to accept that their child may have to repeat a year.
I wonder how many mature parents "out there" whose child is now an adult, will admit that they wish they had asked the school to keep their child behind for another year. Better to "lose" a year, than to lose a future. Actually, what is seen as a loss is actually a gain, as that child is given a year to become established in what they need to learn and understand before they are "elevated" to a higher grade.
Bermuda, we are halfway through this school year and hundreds of thousands of dollars into another year of reform. Somehow, I am not feeling that things are moving fast enough or even in the right direction. We must adequately deal with the front-end of education and not the back-end.
In other words, let's fix our Primary Schools and what is going on there. As we deal with our young children, as they grow, so will the improvements of our middle schools and subsequently our secondary schools. Respice Finem.[[In-content Ad]]
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