est. 2007

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APB for Minister Santia Bradshaw, Police, Teachers and Parents

Submitted by Paula Sealy We are listening. The silence on this brawl is no less troubling or unsettling than the brawl itself. Two years ago the minister asked the police to do their job should teachers strike students. When students strike students where is the outcry for the police to do their job? What have…

Submitted by Paula Sealy

We are listening.

The silence on this brawl is no less troubling or unsettling than the brawl itself.

Two years ago the minister asked the police to do their job should teachers strike students. When students strike students where is the outcry for the police to do their job?

What have the teachers’ unions to say?

Where is their leadership?

Leadership is lacking across the education system. It is time for the minister to do her job.

We are watching.

We continue to listen.

73 responses to “APB for Minister Santia Bradshaw, Police, Teachers and Parents”

  1. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    I lost my school tie and my school ring years ago! Kept the friends and the memories.

    Since we are posting columns.

    Where is Adrian Greene’s column on the rationale behind the republic issue?

    Ralph Jemmott also had an interesting take on it.

    And Don Marshall’s column on the reduced work week was very interesting.

  2. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    Our problems are all in our minds.

    Adrian’s take is that we are like salt water fish swimming in fresh water.

    We have been forced to operate in a foreign culture that does not suit our make up.

    So we try to adapt to our foreign environment and are stifled in the process. As adaptable human beings we have learnt how to survive but not to thrive. As a society that is. Too many are frustrated and unfulfilled.

    Quite frankly, I think the Government is still afraid to fully reimagine Barbados. We shall ping along with a sputtering engine until we do.

    The job of a leader is to lead. Engage the people and bring them along.

    But first they have to trust you!

    And our politicians like to lie and refuse to be transparent.

  3. Dompey Avatar
    Dompey

    Donna

    “We have been forced to operate in a foreign culture that do suit or makeup”

    Are you saying that we were brought to these shores from the different parts of West Africa, with an academic system that was uniquely ours?

    Now I really do not follow you line of reasoning, because since Africa is such a diverse continent, with many different languages and cultures, how would we have been able to regained what had been taking from us during our enslavement, and us it to move our African civilization forward?

  4. Dompey Avatar
    Dompey

    “Just my thought”

    We have enough data now to create the kind of Academic System that is sure to produced the kind of results we think will encourage students to reach their full potential- because in reflection, we can see conspicuously, that the Teaching Strategy of segregating students with different academic and cognitive abilities, have done more bad than good. So in moving forwards, we have to rid that academic system of schools liken to Lodge, Queen’s College, and Harrison College etc, and erect major high schools in Barbados, that will accommodate students from all backgrounds, and with the different academic and cognitive abilities, and this will take the stigma out of education in Barbados, and motivate and implore students to do their best to reach their full potential.

  5. Dompey Avatar
    Dompey

    “Just my thought”

    As I’ve pointed out earlier, the way to encourage students that are having difficulty absorbing the material is not to segregate them and stigmatized them, but to bring them the necessary resources right in the classroom, and this will help them to reach their full potential.
    Now as I reflect on my own education, I often wonder why wouldn’t it that the Ministry of Education did not do any IQ testing to determining the cognitive ability of those students, whom were having difficulty absorbing the material, rather than just throw them into a lower grade?And lastly, a lot of students back in the day were shortchanged by an antiquated and inadequate academic system that did not have the foresight to recognized those students with some form of Intellectual disability, rather than beating them to instilled education, when cognitively, they weren’t equipped to comprehended what they were being taught.

  6. Dompey Avatar
    Dompey

    David

    And David knows one of my Primary School Teachers, before he left the teaching profession in the early 1970s to pursue a career in journalism, Mr. John Sealy, man who taught with intimidation, but nonetheless, he achieved his desired objective because the one thing Mr. Sealy taught me and I still remember today, is how to pronounced They, there, and their ….God blessed you Mr. Sealy …. You were an intimidating figure but nonetheless, you meant well ….

  7. Dompey Avatar
    Dompey

    David

    I am quite one of the Johns here on BU, is my Primary School Teacher?

  8. Dompey Avatar
    Dompey

    David

    there is a parallel between a Teacher and an Army Drill Sergeant, because the quality of the Soldier, depends upon the skill of the Drill Sergeant, likewise the Teacher to the student.

  9. Dompey Avatar
    Dompey

    David

    Forgive me because it may appear that I am all nutts, and I probably am, because as a kid, I fell off of District A wall and hit that back of my head, and all my madda did was to give me some sugar wata. She should have probably taken me tah de hospital and I would probably have been normal today. Sorry …

  10. William Skinner Avatar
    William Skinner

    @ WURA
    Critical analysis of societal issues has always been deemed as unpatriotic.
    Reforming an educational system is not buying buses and garbage trucks. Removing garbage from the mind is not as easy as removing it from the streets. That’s why nothing significantly changes or has changed since independence.
    These changes that progressive thinkers have been calling for, go back to the 70s. In reality they are several decades overdue.
    Perhaps they will surprise us and actually embark on the task of bringing real change , so that this same conversation would not have to be repeated in 2062.

  11. WURA-War-on-U Avatar
    WURA-War-on-U

    “Critical analysis of societal issues has always been deemed as unpatriotic.”

    so how does one become a patriot of a slave society that serves up racism, oppression, suppression, discrimination, thefts from the majority Black population, violation of human rights and pauperization of the young and their families.

    …..i don’t get that, what is there to be patriotic about…i find it insulting and disrespectful that one is required to be patriotic in such a destructive anti-black anti-human environment..

    .they have fooled yall for a very long time….they used the opportunity to bullshit yall and tief billions of dollars, that’s why they are in trouble for money laundering…now….🤣😜 they thought they were being slick..

    “Perhaps they will surprise us and actually embark on the task of bringing real change , so that this same conversation would not have to be repeated in 2062.”

    by then they themselves will more than likely not be on their fake paradise island….they think they got everything figured out.

  12. WURA-War-on-U Avatar
    WURA-War-on-U

    And ya see that patriotic bullshit, they copied that from one of the bigger countries too, it’s not their own creation…..they have created NOTHING…THEY ARE ALL CON ARTISTS…snake oil sales people crawling on their snake bellies telling lies and deceiving.

  13. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    I am ignoring you, Dompey because you don’t want solutions. You simply want to talk foolishness.

  14. David Avatar
    David

    11-Plus concern
    BUT head, Marshall-Harris say children not ready for exam
    PRESIDENT OF THE Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) Pedro Shepherd and UNICEF’s Barbados champion for children Faith Marshall-Harris are concerned about Class 4 students taking the Barbados Secondary Schools’ Entrance Examination.
    Shepherd told the DAILY NATION in an interview that the children were not ready to take the test, also known as the Common Entrance or 11-Plus, as they were two terms behind in work.
    “They are not ready. From practice and common knowledge the students are way behind in the Common Entrance preparation. A lot of things children did not get to cover this year. They would have missed a lot of the reinforcement and a lot of practice. The children are two terms behind,” he said.
    Shepherd, a primary school teacher, added that the Ministry of Education had set an unrealistic date (June 22) for the children to sit the exam but it needed to make an urgent decision as to how it would be facilitated.
    “The ministry is about four months behind in preparation for the Common Entrance Exam. They have not done anything in terms of town hall meetings for parents, dealt with child option school forms, and the assessments they sent for the children to determine where they are have not been corrected or analysed as yet.
    “So how we are going to place students in secondary schools for September 2021? The ministry needs to make a decision and make it like yesterday as to if there is going to be an exam, a system of transfer and if so, how soon are they going to do it so the confusion would not go on any longer. Parents and teachers need to know what to expect and cannot on a day-to-day basis guess what the ministry is going to do with the nation’s children,” he added.
    On May 23, while addressing the Barbados Labour Party’s Stan’ Home Political Mass Rally online, Minister of Education Santia Bradshaw said Barbadians would soon hear the date for the exam.
    “Don’t worry about the 11-Plus ’cause I know many people worried. I told the country we were
    going to do the assessments on the children; the assessments are under way.
    “I give the assurance the next two weeks or sooner, we will have a position as far as the 11-Plus date is concerned. That is our commitment to you,” she said.
    Unfair move
    Meanwhile, Marshall-Harris, speaking at the Faith Marshall-Harris Sandy Lane Charitable Trust Child Helpline recognition ceremony on Saturday at the Warrens Office Complex, St Michael, said it was unfair for some students to take the exam given their challenges with e-learning.
    She said online learning had intensified the divide in the country, as many children did not have devices, access to the Internet or were in households without electricity since their parents were laid off and could not afford to pay the utility bills.
    “How can it be fair or equitable that you must take an examination which requires at least coverage of a syllabus and you are being asked to be tested on that syllabus? I am worried that the situation will become inequitable,” she said.
    When contacted, president of the Association of Public Primary Schools Principals, Dr Hyacinth Harris, said she believed that unless there was an alternative in place to the exam, there was no choice but to let the students complete it.
    However, she added: “I don’t really want to comment [further] on it at this stage because everybody is so agitated. There is too much noise and the children just need to settle and prepare.” (SB)

    Source: Nation

  15. David Avatar
    David

    Discussions on CXC misinformed
    THE REGION WATCHES on as the Caribbean Union of Teachers (CUT), the Group of Concerned Parents and now the United Children’s Fund (UNICEF) demand that for the 2021 CSEC and CAPE June sittings, the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) “make adjustments to the content and administration of these exams”.
    For the record, it should be noted that CXC has already made considerable adjustment to the administration of the papers. For example, five weeks before the exams begin, CXC will provide students and teachers with the topics on which the questions will be based for the constructed response (essay) Paper 2.
    Reduced requirements
    This is an unprecedented concession and there are concerns that CXC must do everything in its power, to ensure that it is not “watering down” the examinations.
    Further, CXC has reduced some of the SBA (school-based assessment) requirements and has facilitated students who wish to defer to the January and June 2022 sittings without economic consequences once the deadline for requesting deferral is observed.
    CXC has to be very careful that any modifications made in response to a desire by some to have less rigorous examinations in 2021 do not raise any doubts about the equivalence of its certification issued in 2021 with that which it has awarded over previous years.
    In addition, following discussions with COSHOD (Council for Human and Social Development) at a recent meeting facilitated by the Ministry of Education, Barbados, CXC has agreed to further delay the start of the examinations to end-June, thus, granting candidates additional time to prepare for the examinations.
    This latter point is another major concession for CXC, as it will be under severe pressure and will need to seek additional resources, to meet critical deadlines with respect to the issue of preliminary results by the end of September.
    It appears that while these concessions by CXC may be appreciated by some, there are demands for even more substantial changes and greater flexibility.
    Choice of questions
    Earlier, the Caribbean Union of Teachers (CUT) had suggested that the multiple choice (MC) paper include 50 per cent more items, to provide students with a choice of questions to which they might respond, so as to “increase the probability of students getting questions to which they know the answers.”
    A more recent request is that the multiple choice be removed altogether and the examinations restructured to comprise only Paper 2 and the SBA. This request is difficult to understand.
    Candidates traditionally perform well on the multiple choice paper, as it is a well-known fact that students are usually well drilled for this paper by extensive practice on past questions. To remove this paper will be to the disadvantage of a large proportion of the candidate population.
    The CUT and UNICEF, are concerned about the “low
    level of preparedness as the pandemic and the related impact on education prevented students from attaining learning outcomes as desired”.
    There is no denying the impact COVID-19 has had on the world and particularly the less developed regions. This has been a period of tremendous challenge to Caribbean societies, education systems and individual students. It will take some time for the region to fully recover from the effects of the pandemic on our education process.
    For those who do not feel prepared for the examinations, it is highly recommended that they defer until 2022 and use the time to prepare for the next cycle of examinations.
    For candidates, like those in Guyana, who have expressed their readiness for the examinations, we urge you to go for it and we wish you every success.
    Insight from Guyana
    In this regard, we acknowledge the Minister of Education in Guyana, Priya Manickchand, who noted that if UNICEF had consulted with her ministry “we would have offered some insight on what’s being done here, as well as some of the things being asked for (which) have already been decided by CXC . . . ”.
    What is very concerning in the ongoing discussions about CXC, is the vitriol and misinformed and negative comments about an institution of CARICOM, established almost 50 years ago, which is considered one of the success stories of the region.
    CXC is not a perfect institution. But there is no doubt that it is an institution that belongs to the region and has earned and maintains international recognition and respect.
    Susan Giles is a former senior manager at the Caribbean Examinations Council. This article was submitted as a Letter to the Editor.
    CXC has to be very careful that any modifications made in response to a desire by some to have less rigorous examinations in 2021 do not raise any doubts about the equivalence of its certification issued in 2021 with that which it has awarded over previous years.

    Source: Nation

  16. David Avatar
    David

    Childhood crisis in region
    BARBADOS AND THE rest of the Caribbean is experiencing a childhood development crisis and if not addressed the effects could be similar to a Category 5 hurricane.
    That was the bold statement by director of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies at The University of the West Indies’ (UWI) Mona Campus, Professor Aldrie Henry-Lee made recently during a lecture aired on UWI TV entitled Recovering Childhood And Building Child Agency In The Caribbean.
    Based on a book she recently wrote, Henry-Lee, who is also an advocate for children’s rights and a professor of social policy, said it was indisputable that thousands of the region’s children were treated “very badly”.
    True potential
    She said the COVID-19 pandemic was intensifying “the manifest childhood inequalities and cases of child endangerment in the Caribbean” which would more than likely result in “several thousand children not being able to recover their lost childhood and fulfilling their true potential”.
    “Childhood in the region is in a crisis. We have to behave as if a category five hurricane was headed in our direction and deal with the situation with the [same] kind of urgency, attention and focus,” she said.
    She said child abuse was prolific in Barbados and that was just based on the number of reported cases to the Child Care Board (CCB).
    She said that in 2017, the CCB registered more than 1 000 cases of abuse with more than half of the cases being child neglect.
    She added that the 12 to 16 agegroup registered the highest number of sexual abuse cases with females making up the bulk of the numbers.
    Henry-Lee said there was a high incidence of all types of abuse before the pandemic including corporal punishment, sexual abuse, which she stressed was a widespread problem in the Caribbean, child trafficking, emotional abuse, the recruitment of “child soldiers” in gang or turf wars and child labour.
    Parental stress
    During the pandemic she said parental stress and tension and layoffs had an impact on children with the latter creating a situation of food insecurity in many households. She added that grandparents were also directed to stay indoors and keep their distance and if they were the sole caregivers to children, those children would have also been impacted.
    The professor said the
    pandemic also deepened the socio-economic divide between the “haves” and the “have nots” as many children did not have access to technological devices or the internet and in some cases their homes had too many distractions and took away from their e-learning capabilities.
    She added this would also have an impact on the number of qualifications children leave secondary school with.
    Henry-Lee said the lack of physical exercise and increased mental health issues associated with the e-learning situation was also of major concern. She also called on all regional Governments and agents of socilisation to focus on how we could save the region’s youth.
    “We need to get back to the basics – interpersonal relationships, how we relate to each other as adults and how we set the examples for our children. Children live what they learn; they are watching us.
    “Parents, guardians and caregivers the responsibility begins with you; you are the first connection children have with the rest of society. Parenting is not about shouting and showing you are in charge or beating to get respect. It is about showing love and setting an example.”
    However, Henry-Lee said the family could not rear a child alone and so it was up to the school, church, justice system, media, health service and social protective systems to play their role in developing the region’s children. (SB)

    Source: Nation

  17. Dompey Avatar
    Dompey

    “Professor Lee, seems to be more pessimistic about the future of our young people than I do”

    Now it can be argue and argue with much justification that the Children during the Second World War had to deal with similar stresses and tensions, food shortest etc, and an uncertainty about the future, and yet they were resilient enough to come away from that experienced though ( especially Jewish Children) mentally and emotionally traumatized, and yet they were able to overcome this experienced, and grow into well balanced individuals who were able to contributed to the betterment of their society.

    So I do believe that the Children of Caribbean possessed the resilience, to overcome the trauma of Covid 19, and that they will emerged from this experienced not as broken men and women, but as men and women who will lend of their experiences during Covid 19 with the right intervention of course, to make their society a better place for all to live.

  18. WURA-War-on-U Avatar
    WURA-War-on-U

    These so called educators on the island are doing more harm than good to this generation of children, but what do you expect from 11 plus Slaves who don’t want any changes or upgrades to a miseducation system derived from slavery, because in their minds they believe they are on top and it has served them well, NOTHING DERIVED FROM SLAVERY IS ANY GOOD….

    they are….backward thinking and believe everyone should be just like them..

    another generation of children should not be subjected to these goddamn idiots..

  19. Dompey Avatar
    Dompey

    And I also believe that with the right kind of intervention, those who had been abused during the Covid 19 pandemic, whether is be psychologically, verbally, physically, emotionally, sexually or have experienced some sort of wilful neglected, in the future will become the best advocates for the innocent and most vulnerable in our society.

    So Profess Lee, the Eternal Pessimist tunnel
    vision focused articulation of the facts as they relates to the negative impacted of the pandemic on Caribbean Children, does not sit will with me because I can see the light in the tunnel, whereas she appears to be tunnel vision focused.

  20. David Avatar
    David

    Being strong advocates has nothing to do with whether the abuse should have occurred if we try to do better.

  21. WURA-War-on-U Avatar
    WURA-War-on-U

    Isn’t she a vision of beauty, that’s the first thing to be taught in the schools…ACCEPTING YOUR ANCESTRY…instead of the ignorant Slaves, who are mostly adults, ridiculing and mocking, smirking and cutting their slave eyes and showing pure HATRED anytime they see African headwear or clothing….accept who you are and you will see the beauty in WHO YOU ARE….

    https://www.instagram.com/p/CPiQip2HG9B/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

  22. WURA-War-on-U Avatar
    WURA-War-on-U

    A cross section of the majority population have now OPTED to home school their children, let’s see the backward blunderers and fumblers try any uneducated attempts to arrest these Black parents or give them any grief in the process as they have done before..

  23. WURA-War-on-U Avatar
    WURA-War-on-U

    Antigua’s PM is now telling them that the region’s retrogressive curriculum can be blamed for them losing investment opportunities, jobs, money annually etc…don’t know how many ways they believe it can be said, we have said it for decades and then YEARS on BU… but the only good thing came out of that, is they didn’t get to tief more billions

    let’s see if they continue as is…

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