Georgetown: “I strongly feel that the only hope we have as a developing country is if we find ways and means for our brightest and best able minds to pursue Technical and Vocational Education and master it…that is a reality and I am not going to change from that mindset,” said Chief Education Officer, Olato Sam, recently. Sam was at the time responding to the proposal of a South Georgetown teacher for the Ministry of Education to reconsider bringing back Community High Schools as a means of dealing with students who seem incapable of passing one grade level to move on to another.
The CEO in his response verbally lashed out at those who are of the belief that people attending technical vocational institutions should be viewed as individuals of lesser academic abilities. “ What bothers me and would bother any teacher of technical education here is that people equate lack of academic ability with the need to do vocational education and that was never meant to be anywhere in this country.”
Why is it that people assume that because you are working with your hand and you are getting your skin dirty that you have got to be a dunce? We are then saying “boy if you can’t do this academic you might as well go and use your hand’.”
According to the CEO those who opt to continue to embrace mindset that dictates such a style as the accepted pathway for the apparent less able “you and I will agree to disagree.” He pointed to the fact that the Ministry of Education is mandated to devise policies that look at the entire education system and what is best at the end of the day for the nation’s children. He alluded to the fact that the “biggest fallacy in our education system, and I want every teacher to know this and go out and tell everybody you know that Community High Schools (like Tech Voc Institutions) were never meant for the slowest, underperforming students in our education system…They were never intended for such,” Sam categorically noted.
According to the CEO he has in his possession, for anyone to read, the Concept Paper that started Community High Schools in this country. These like other similar types of institutions like the practical instruction centers, according to Sam, were meant as alternative institutions that would have a strong technical vocational curriculum.
He further vocalized his conviction that “for the development of this country we need our best minds pursuing science and technology to build and develop a nation of needs. We don’t need dunces in our technical institutions and that is where the problem lies. Nowhere, no how was it ever intended that the dunce people should do Tech Voc, and until we erase that stigma, until people stop saying that the less able should go there we will not jump start our developmental processes in this country.”
Sam added too efforts have been made to high-jack the system pointing out that “we have undermined community high schools; we made them into the dumping grounds for the less capable and made them into institutions that were set up to fail and that was never suppose to happen.”
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