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The recent controversy over Immigration policy is clear evidence of the inability of Bahamian governments to rationally tackle the core issues that hold our economy back.
As Franklyn Wilson noted, the country's overall approach to immigration was settled as far back as the early 1970s, and yet we can still waste time over it today. The issue was put to rest by the implementation of a strict Bahamianisation policy by the new PLP government, accompanied by a massive investment in education.
These two policy shifts reversed a trend towards the wholesale recruitment of expatriates, and broadened educational opportunities for Bahamians who could then expand the nation's middle class.
As the late Dr Keva Bethel described the period immediately following the Second World War: "The highest forms of employment to which the majority of Bahamians were likely to be able to aspire...were posts in the civil service, teaching, nursing, or the church. Moreover, only a proportionately modest number actually achieved those positions."
But in the first years after majority rule in 1967, the government spent as much as 19 per cent of the annual budget on education, building new schools throughout the country to provide better education for all Bahamian children.
Former Tourism Minister Vincent Vanderpool Wallace doggedly drove a core message on achieving success in tourism: Relentless focus on the visitor experience! Similarly, might we achieve greater success in education by relentlessly focusing on the learning experience of students in public schools?
Scholar of mythology, the late Joseph Campbell, might have agreed with Vanderpool Wallace: “I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”
Some may argue with the beginning of his proposition. Yet, from a hermit in his cell praying, “Nearer, My God to Thee” to the thrill seekers atop a rollercoaster ride, hands outstretched to touch the sky, we are endlessly seeking experiences of being alive. The hermit and the rider both hunger for experiences that may captivate the whole person: mind, body and soul.
There are numerous achievements of the government-operated primary through secondary school system. We can boast of fine teachers like Emile Hunt at C. V. Bethel and dedicated administrators like Cheryl Samuels at H. O. Nash.
Amidst success stories, there are outsized failures, inadequately and partially measured by low standardized test scores and a trickle of graduates attaining diplomas.
The public education report card includes poor grades assessing the system’s inability to graduate greater numbers of students competent in English, the grammar of citizenship, and the language and practice of civility.
Martin Luther King Jr. often thundered: “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” The algebra of failure in our public schools -- of poor letter-grades, of poor statistics, of crime rates associated with the failures of this system -- are symptoms of conscientious stupidity by various stakeholders of public education.
Mrs. Callahan, now deceased, was a master teacher who eventually became an adjunct professor of education. During her storied career she taught elementary, high school and college students.
She taught in public and private schools, counting among her thousands of students, children from well-heeled and economically disadvantaged backgrounds. She taught in depressed inner city schools and in leafy suburban enclaves.
In her last decades as a teacher her specialty was a Methods in Teaching seminar for prospective elementary and high school teachers. Two foundational principles were the basis for her encyclopaedia of methods tested and honed over many decades. They were not novel ideas, though it is remarkable how often they are forgotten or ignored.
The first principle was the constant reminder that elementary and secondary school teachers need always remember that primarily they teach students and secondarily a subject matter. The second principle was that most discipline problems flowed from a breakdown in the teaching and learning experience in the classroom.
Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave a stirring speech at last week's Republican National Convention in Tampa that focused on education in America. As a top foreign policy expert, she noted that "strength begins at home." Although in American terms this refers to leadership in military technology, we thought her more general message would be a useful one for Bahamian policymakers to hear.
Along with Barack Obama, Rice is a key role model for the African-American community. Born in 1954 in Birmingham, Alabama - the only child of a Presbyterian minister and a schoolteacher - she grew up surrounded by racism in the segregated South, but went on to become the first woman and first African American to serve as provost of Stanford University. In 2001, she was appointed national security adviser by President George W. Bush, and became the first black woman to serve as secretary of state (from 2005 to 2009.)
Rice earned her bachelor's degree in political science in 1974; a master's in 1975; and a Ph.D. from the University of Denver's Graduate School of International Studies in 1981. After leaving her government job, she became co-chair of the Independent Task Force on US Education Reform and National Security, sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. The task force includes 31 prominent education experts, national security authorities, and corporate leaders.
This group of experts has warned Americans that "Educational failure puts the United States' future economic prosperity, global position, and physical safety at risk. The country will not be able to keep pace—much less lead—globally unless it moves to fix the problems it has allowed to fester for too long."
And education reform is not a question of money. The United States invests more in K-12 public education than most other developed countries, yet American students rank 14th in reading, 25th in math, and 17th in science internationally. More than a quarter of students fail to graduate from high school in four years; and for African-American and Hispanic students this number approaches 40 per cent.
Does that sound familiar? It should, because both sides of our political divide have recently acknowledged the failure of the Bahamian public school system in the face of even worse statistics. This is after many years of political stonewalling and prodding by private sector leaders and commentators. The business community in particular has long complained that a large percentage of Bahamian students leave school functionally illiterate - in other words, unable to compete for a decent job.
Prime Minister Perry Christie recently acknowledged that continued poor results from government schools posed a threat to national development. Former Education Minister Desmond Bannister said our schools suffered from an entrenched bureaucracy that protected "unqualified teachers in critical subjects". Current Education Minister Jerome Fitzgerald admitted that half of all Bahamian students are flunking high school and called for "a frank and open discussion" on reforming the system. Did we hear all this right? The following are condensed versions of two articles on this subject - the first was published in October 2005 and the second in September 2007.
A Primer on Bahamian Education
This past summer scores of experts from around the country sat down in a hotel ballroom at great expense to figure out how to “transform” our failed education system. It was the first major re-evaluation of Bahamian schools since a national task force was set up in January, 1993.
What happened at this four-day meeting has implications for the 50,000-plus students in our public schools as well as our entire future as a modern society. But we have yet to receive any kind of report. So to help put this critical issue into perspective, here is Tough Call's primer on Bahamian education.
Recently, I caught the tail-end of a polite rant on JCN-TV by College of the Bahamas professor Nicolette Bethel. She was lamenting the fact that the College's move towards university status has stalled, threatening dire consequences for the future of the country.
My first reaction was: Well, aren't we already part of the University of the West Indies?
We are indeed - have been since 1964, in fact. And we contribute about $3 million a year to this prestigious regional institution, which operates a School of Clinical Medicine & Research, a Hotel Management Programme and an Open University 'campus' in Nassau.
My second reaction was: Why does the College need to become a university anyway?
"The concept of a university is a place where ideas are encouraged, where economies are expanded, where industries are created, where jobs are multiplied," Bethel explained to me. "If the country does not show confidence in itself, in its young, in its own ability to innovate, the moment will pass. Our lack of understanding of this is a recipe for future disaster."
And apparently it's all part of the plan - the 2009-2019 strategic plan, which says the College "expects to become a university…to develop new undergraduate and graduate programmes, increase research and innovation activities and focus its work in areas crucial to national development."
In his introduction to that plan, Council Chairman T. Baswell Donaldson says a university will "support and drive national development (and) the College is ready to take that step." He told me the same thing over the phone recently: "We are ready at any time to become a university, but I have no idea what the government's timetable is."
A rather startling admission. But before we get into a discussion of that, a little background is in order.
In the opening chapters of 2010, two Caribbean intellectuals featured prominently. Following Haiti’s devastating earthquake in January, Sir Hilary Beckles, principal of the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill, Barbados, penned the brilliant commentary, the Hate and the Quake.
In early February, cultural icon Rex Nettleford died suddenly. An intellectual and brilliant dancer, Professor Nettleford was still serving as a lecturer and vice chancellor emeritus of UWI when he passed away at 77.
These men were not singularly administrators. They were also academics whose visionary voices resonated in the academy and beyond. Both men produced exuberant bodies of work, including a number of books. Both proved to be beautiful thinkers, beautiful writers and beautiful citizens of the Caribbean.
Professors Nettleford and Beckles appreciated that the life of the community, both national and pan-Caribbean, requires a cultivation of the life of the mind, of the imagination and of the human spirit -- with a Caribbean flavour. They dedicated themselves to these tasks through a fierce commitment to rigorous critical inquiry.
•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind
who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published
every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at
frontporchguardian@gmail.com.
The decision of President Janyne Hodder to resign her post at the College of The Bahamas after a short tenure provides COB and the country with an opportunity to revisit core issues related to the institution’s evolution towards university status.
The knee-jerk reaction by some that her departure will harm COB’s transition to university status is based on all sorts of faulty assumptions. It assumes that Mrs. Hodder is the only person in the world who can lead this effort, and that there are no others who can so do. Notoriously unscientific newspaper polls notwithstanding, Mrs. Hodder’s retirement is not Armageddon.
President Hodder has a number of accomplishments and many are grateful for her service and wish her well in her future endeavours. There are others who remain generally displeased with her presidency. It is disingenuous to suggest that all of the criticisms concerning her tenure revolve around her not being a Bahamian.
•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind
who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published
every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at
frontporchguardian@gmail.com.
A brilliantly composed letter to the editor by Joan Thompson, President of the Nassau Institute, recently appearing in two dailies, should be used in C.O.B. freshman courses ranging from Introduction to Basic Logic to How Not to Write: 101.
The letter demonstrates, masterfully, how failed satire can turn into self-parody and how a scaffold of poor arguments collapses under the weight of false premises. Writing back to an editor, insisting one’s opinion was intended as satire, is akin to a stand-up comedienne having to remind the audience to laugh at her jokes.
In an explanatory note to the editor of The Tribune, the letter’s author notes: “The article was intended satire, not a serious proposal for a system of education. This was lost in the edited version of the original.” Unfortunately, the satire also failed in the original version.
