est. 2007

Barbados Underground

Bringing News and Opinions to the People

The Best Education System Needs Loving, Concerned and Perceptive PARENTS

The following was posted by BU commenter Ping Pong on Barbados Education System Challenge, 50 Years and Moving blog. Many if not all of the features of the Finnish education system were “borrowed” from elsewhere and many of these features are actually part of the Barbados education system. However a system is only as good…

,
The following was posted by BU commenter Ping Pong on Barbados Education System Challenge, 50 Years and Moving blog.

educationMany if not all of the features of the Finnish education system were “borrowed” from elsewhere and many of these features are actually part of the Barbados education system. However a system is only as good as the people who administer and operate the system and the society for which the system serves. I have formally and informally studied educational systems for many years. I have concluded that (a) there are no perfect systems and (b) even if a “perfect” system existed many children would still be “failures” or be failed by whatever system is developed.

The best educational system (or the best in whatever circumstance) is the one that loving, concerned and perceptive parents fashion for their children. This means that without parents first knowing their children (i.e their strengths, weaknesses and interests) and pursuing a pragmatic vision for their children’s development then success will be elusive. As deficient as our school system may be, there are still many opportunities for individual development. No one can be as concerned and as dedicated about the educational development of any individual child as that child’s parents (assuming good parents). I believe the main failure of any educational system is really a failure of parenting. I strongly reject the notion of “it takes a village to raise MY child” especially when the village has no good intentions about my child. This is not to dispute that we all live in a society and the influence of others may be significant but discernment and choice must be exerted in one’s children’s interest.

Further, an educational systems does not exist in isolation of the society in which it operates. For example, let us take the matter of the health of citizens as distinct from the health (really the medical) care of citizens. If a society has medical care as a significant part of its economy (hospitals, pharmaceuticals, diagnostic devices and prosthetics, nursing homes etc.) would one expect a school system to promote in all students good nutrition, exercise, avoidance of harmful substances, healthy behaviour (adequate rest, stress relief etc.) and considerate manner to others as significant educational outcomes or those students that show promise as future doctors, biomedical technologists and entrepreneurs?

Nobody gets to heaven on a group pass.

76 responses to “The Best Education System Needs Loving, Concerned and Perceptive PARENTS”

  1. chad99999 Avatar
    chad99999

    I am surprised PLT does not object to the Communist idea of organizing instruction in our school system around the national objectives of the country.

    I wouldn’t want to be an ant in an army of ants trained to carry out tasks in order to meet the objectives laid out in a national development plan.

  2. chad99999 Avatar
    chad99999

    PLT

    Of course I believe education should be based on concrete experiences. But The reason we don’t have more ‘experiential’ education is that it costs too much.

    In fact, unless the curriculum is standardized, it will be too costly to make any big improvements in education, period.

  3. David Avatar
    David

    What is the purpose of education if not to make ALL of society better off?

  4. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @chad99999
    I’m not in favour of making education dependent on ‘national objectives.’ I said that I don’t see any way of working out these in a timely and effective manner. In response to Bush Tea I elaborated that “when we try to engineer entire societies we f**k up on a truly massive scale: Catholicism, communism, fascism, neo-liberalism, neo-liberalism, anarchism…”

  5. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @chad99999
    Good education systems are not cheap. Better teacher training, more experiential learning, up to date curriculum design, meaningful parent involvement, monitoring and evaluation… it’s all costly, the point is to make it cost effective.

  6. chad99999 Avatar
    chad99999

    David is taking utilitarianism to an extreme.

    David, the purpose of education is to help individuals enrich their lives by achieving a more complex experience of the world around them.

    We can kill more than one bird with a stone. So we can pursue personal enrichment and at the same time develop skills that are useful for raising income and welfare.

  7. Gerry Hal Inniss Avatar
    Gerry Hal Inniss

    David has questions (plus the inevitable exclamation) on November 14, 2016 at 11:47 AM.

    Here’s David: “Thanks Peter! Not sure if there is a similar document for Barbados.
    Is Vision 2030 a 100% live document? Is is a top of the mind document? Are stakeholders using the document to inform strategies?”

    This from David perfectly encapsulates the entire discussion about education on this thread.

    We can forgive the “is is” error as a basic typo, but all the rest of it is non-thought. It’s exactly what George Orwell meant when he referred to the hideous situation in which “prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.”

    You think you can grasp Orwell by looking at the 20,000 years of human knowledge distilled into the shite you cradle in your hand?

    Stakeholders are rolling out this document to inform decisions going forward and to facilitate buy-in with an outreach strategy to facilitate the primary objective of locating the context within its paradigmatic facilitation. We need ownership of the stakeholder buy-in. This are a truism.

  8. Simple Simon Avatar
    Simple Simon

    @Hal Austin November 14, 2016 at 3:48 AM “Why is the attorney general now launching an attack on young women who smoke and drink? Is he talking about underage young women, if so he should say? Is underage smoking now a criminal offence?”

    it is an offense to sell tobacco and alcohol to minors.

    Our young people need to be dissuaded from drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco and from sexual promiscuity. And if the Attorney General wants to help parents with these things we welcome him. We don’t consider it to be an attack.

    Drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco and sexual promiscuity can have negative impacts on our grandchildren. We need the next generations to be as healthy as possible,

  9. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ Chad and PLT
    The one question that you two continue to refuse to address is…
    To what end…?

    What is the raison d’être of having an education system in the first place….?
    Perhaps if we can gain consensus on that fundamental issue…. ?

    It is not helpful to continue basing our arguments around an OBVIOUSLY failed construct.

    @ WW&C
    Unlike your broom stick, Bushie’s whacker is occupied in multiple bush fields….. and not always able to respond on cue….

  10. Simple Simon Avatar
    Simple Simon

    By the time our children arrive at the school gate just after their 5th birthdays they will already have spent 43,800 hours with their “brass bowl” parents.

    During the next 16 years they will spend 1260 hours a year at school, and 8760 hours per year with their “brass bowl” parents.

    1260 x 16=20,160
    8760 x 16=140,160

    We NEED excellent parents.

  11. Hal Austin Avatar
    Hal Austin

    Simple Simon we are not talking about sales of cigarettes or alcohol to underage children. I am not aware of any country in the world where underage smoking is a crime.
    It is a health and parental matter, so is drinking and eating too much sugar, etc. But they are not crimes. We must be careful of criminalising amoral or anti-social behaviour. That is a creeping policy choice of western liberal democracies. We must push back against reactionary Clintonism/Blairism..

  12. Simple Simon Avatar
    Simple Simon

    chad99999 November 14, 2016 at 11:45 AM “The more advanced a discipline or subject, the closer it approaches this ideal. So Math, physics, chemistry, statistics, even economics have constructed bodies of knowledge that are reliable and permanent, or that change very slowly.”

    Not language chad99999?

    Is it possible to teach math, physics, chemistry, statistics or even economics without first teaching language?

  13. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ Chad
    When universities create knowledge, they try to create knowledge that lasts..
    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    …again we need to define terms…. what do you mean by the term “knowledge”?

    What ‘knowledge’ has been CREATED by any university? …. in mathematics for example?
    What do you mean by knowledge? …do you mean TRUTHS? …facts of nature? LAWS of nature?

    Are these then CREATED, …or did you mean ‘discovered’? as in ‘unveiled’?

    …and who in fact did CREATE these laws /facts/ truths? ….that are so complex and intricate that even now, many BASIC ones remain a mystery to our best brains?

    How is it possible to conceptualise a rational ‘EDUCATION SYSTEM’ without reference to the fact that such all-encompassing ‘TRUTHS’ underpin all of our so-called ‘fonts’ of knowledge..?

    Surely there MUST therefore logically ALSO be a ‘raison d’être’ for the whole experience called life… What brilliant brain could conceptualise all the laws of mathematics, chemistry, biology and physics ….. and NOT have a logical, sane, meaningful PURPOSE …for so doing?

    That YOU do not know life’s raison d’être does NOT, in itself, mean there is none – NOR does any ignorance on your part diminish its CRITICAL import to life success. Indeed, it may well explain everything that we see….

  14. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ Simple Simon
    We need excellent parents
    ++++++++++++++++++++++
    So??!! that is NOT the issue.
    We also need excellent food, water, air, roads, politicians…

    Have you ANY idea of how many PISS poor parents manage to raise decent, respectable, upright children…? despite themselves..? That line of argument is flawed.

    Shiite nuh!!
    You off sick today….? or the ZRs on strike? you only normally dumb down the damn blog after 11 PM… 🙂

    @ Chad
    I wouldn’t want to be an ant in an army of ants trained to carry out tasks in order to meet the objectives laid out in a national development plan.
    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Since you are an albino-centric guru, do you have any idea of the educational policies of large transnational corporations in terms of the relationship between their educational initiatives and their corporate strategy…?
    Do you think that Apple allows individual employees to find their own educational paths and to bring their individualistic inclinations to the workplace strategies?

    If not, why not…?

  15. Simple Simon Avatar
    Simple Simon

    @Bush Tea November 14, 2016 at 3:20 PM “Simple Simon You off sick today….?”

    The Simple is never sick. Too smart and too disciplined to be sick.

  16. Simple Simon Avatar
    Simple Simon

    Out for some exercise. Back later…maybe after 11.

  17. David Avatar
    David

    @chad99999

    You missed the point big time. The national pie (resources) is not unlimited. A vision/national strategy will inform how incentives like scholarships/exhibitions etc are allocated. Such an approach will NOT prevent citizens from pursuing their dreams although it will mean they have to put some more skin in the game. A win win.

  18. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @Bush Tea
    I accepted and quoted your submission that “‘education’ is the process of preparing future generations to carry forward human development.”

  19. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @Bush Tea asked “Do you think that Apple allows individual employees to find their own educational paths and to bring their individualistic inclinations to the workplace strategies?”
    Actually I have a couple of old schoolmates who are long time Apple engineers: individual employees do find their own educational paths and to bring their individualistic inclinations to work, at least in the engineering departments where they are.

  20. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ Simple Simon
    You are a gem.
    If Bushie was not so intimately aware of the Delilah’s and Jezebels of this world, ..you would be considered to fill the position of wife number 5… well #4 really, …cause Islandgal ain’t really saying a pang.

    @ PLT
    Bushie don’t know when to take you seriously.
    Organisations like Apple usually institute their own unique educational programs with their own language, methodologies, culture, rewards and measurement systems. Employees either get on board or ship out… Successful projects are executed by TEAMS who must all speak the same language, understand the culture and conform to the same quality standards….
    The only Apple engineer REALLY able to bring their individualistic inclinations to work is probably Tim Cook….

  21. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @ Bush Tea
    You radically overestimate the regimentation of Silicon Valley computer engineering culture. I know this mainly because I have college buddies and a family member who are computer engineers there. It goes furthest at Google, where engineers can work on their own pet projects for 20% of their time. It makes sense for firms like these who hire the cleverest minds to give them significant free reign: that’s where their innovation comes from, not out of committee work.

    By the way Tim Cook isn’t really considered an computer engineer in Silicon Valley culture because he never did any software or hardware design. His career has been entirely in logistics, sales and management.

  22. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ PLT
    It goes furthest at Google, where engineers can work on their own pet projects for 20% of their time.
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Do you see why Bushie can’t tell when to take you seriously?

    So you are saying that a good example of ‘engineers having the freedom to do as they like’ is Google, where they are only required to toe the corporate line FOR 80% OF THE TIME?

    Shiite man PLT…. refer to the Pareto principle and see that you are saying the same thing as Bushie. There is usually a 20% margin for error in general statements such as these… 🙂

    …and that Tom is not and operating engineer, but an administrator, … is precisely Bushie’s point.

  23. Simple Simon Avatar
    Simple Simon

    @Bush Tea November 14, 2016 at 8:22 PM “If Bushie was not so intimately aware of the Delilah’s and Jezebels of this world.”

    Why have you been spending the intimate moments of your life with wicked deceitful women when there are tens of millions, and hundreds of millions of good honest women in the world?

  24. Shontelle R. Brathwaite Avatar
    Shontelle R. Brathwaite

    I forgot to mention…

    Institutions like Freemasonry and the purposeful British mis-education of Barbadians during the apprenticeship is at the foundation of some of the problems anyone finds with Barbadian education. For example, the AmerIndian heritage of many Barbadians is ignored, as we are taught that we are African only; many of the noble titles of our ancestry are hidden in curse words. That apprenticeship is telling; it purpose was this removal of identity that made the Bajan character strong; anglicising the island through the Anglican Church. Many of us don’t even know that we speak a foundationally AmerIndian language, that is classified a language by linguists. The grammar of Bajan is not English at all. English is not a pitch-tonal language; our language is rich and profound.

    I live in Boston, many Bajans may not kow that Asians and natives to the Americas can hear words from their language. We have still have words all the way from the natives of the Fawklands, grammar and verb structure from the Tecs, and words that came across the Berring straight, tribes, the khitans, kipchaks, xongnu, tamer…jurchens. You hear it in the names of the Wampanoag, Algonquin, Cheyenne, Inuit, Aleut…How many of us know that we share ancestry with someone like Kim Jong Un, the Song Dynasty, Tang Dynasty, more so than England. How many of us know that a Chinese person’s tribal ancestors are the same as ours? We are from Bimini Bimshire Barbaydus Bimbadus etc, the AmerIndian names of the island that were not hidden, or suppressed. How many of you have Bailey, Innis, Thompson etc. in our ancestry? WE ARE PROTECTED AS A PROTECTED GROUP, AmerIndian, AND SOME OF US DON’T EVEN KNOW IT!

    I know there is a Bajan dictionary. I’ve been working a bit on an education project that included explaining Bajan grammar a little.

    https://schoolrenaissance.wordpress.com/2016/11/08/280/

    Our issues in education are deeper than we may think.

  25. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    LOL @ Simple Simon
    Intimately AWARE of them, ….so that intimate INVOLVEMENT can best be avoided…. LOL

    @ Shontelle R Braffit
    Agree 100% with your assessment of the intent, influence and impact of freemasonry and the church on Barbados. These two have taken the lead roles in the forging of bajan brass bowls.

    …yuh lost Bushie with the second paragraph however….

  26. Simple Simon Avatar
    Simple Simon

    @Shontelle R. Brathwaite November 15, 2016 at 5:54 PM “How many of us know that we share ancestry with someone like Kim Jong Un, the Song Dynasty, Tang Dynasty.”

    We know that all the people of the world came out of Africa.

Older Comments
1 2

The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.

Trending

Discover more from Barbados Underground

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading