Submitted by William Skinner
Ever since the late 60s the political managerial class has made the teaching profession, the scapegoat for most of the negative trends in the society. This lambasting of the profession reached its zenith in the mid-seventies and continued. What we are witnessing at present are the results of the beatings that the teachers have endured at the hands of both the Barbados and Democratic Labour Parties.
The political managerial class has been successful in breeding the anti-teacher sentiment that is now evident. The students who are at present engaged in deviant behavior on the school plants are the children and grand children of those, who witnessed the assault on the profession. In other words, their parents and grandparents, who perhaps escaped serious scrutiny of their deviance, would have graduated from the school system believing that teachers are to be disrespected and maligned. They then passed on this assessment to their children and grand children.
There is clear evidence that the system is collapsing under the weight of ineffective measures of discipline, an elitist gas chamber called the eleven plus exam and a level of political corruption, which has basically chased professional public servants out of the ministry and replaced them with party hacks, who in some cases ironically, were once members of the profession.
The reason that the political managerial class is so silent on the now daily emerging problems in the schools is a very profound admission that it has benefitted tremendously from the decadence that it has nurtured. In terms of pure sophisticated yardfowlism, there are very few ministries that can surpass what occurs in the Ministry of Education under both the Barbados Labour Party and the Democratic Labour Party.
Unless the emerging crisis is brought under control, we would all pay a very great price for allowing the political managerial class to destroy the teaching profession.
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