Chickens, plantains, and fertiliser galore. The sound of heavy machinery on concrete is engulfing the air. Hardcourts are being worked on. Roads that have remained abandoned or unattended for years are suddenly being graded. Materials are being dumped. Students are being summoned in groups to receive laptops and scholarships. Arrowroot farmers who were affected since the 2001 volcano eruption are suddenly remembered now, to receive relief.
North Leeward is being pummelled with talks of hotel development, even though ones that were announced years ago for other areas of the country can’t get off the ground.
What do all these things have in common? It’s the ULP government cramming for the pending “national exam” — general elections.
I suppose that a pass is a pass. After all, the education policy says promote everyone to secondary school, pass or not, even though they may not have mastered the required knowledge. That is the standard by which we operate, so the example that is being set by the government seems to fall right in line — that you can cram and scramble at the last minute, hoping to pass, even if you barely “scrape through”.
What it means, however, is that you have not mastered the skills necessary, even if you pass. In the case of the country, it means the government has not mastered a development policy to holistically benefit everyone. A holistic approach would have seen work being done throughout the years of the administration and not only during the few remaining weeks of its political life.
The sad reality is that in the same way we end up having students who cannot read and perform at the required level, there could be a government that also cannot perform at the required level.
What it does to pass is that it crams it all in at the last minute, counting on the people to only remember their last meal. The closer it is to the election that these things happen, the clearer that memory is expected to be.
Like passing an exam without the required knowledge of the subject matter, short-term political goal appears to be the driving force behind the country’s development. Yet, some will argue that the country is not 20-30 years behind others in the region. How could it not be behind when the development strategy is to get as much done at the last minute, as an election approaches, in an effort to sweeten the pot?
What do teachers say about students who consistently take this approach? They often miss class. Their attendance is very poor. The only time you see them is just before the exam, hoping to scramble a pass.
More sweets are widely expected to be announced come Independence Day.
Observer
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Some children are qualified for lower technical and practical vocational education, other children are more suitable for theoretically oriented schools. We must change our education system so no one is left behind.
My only prayer and hope is that the ‘Examiners'(who are the Vincentian Electorates) would not fall for this scheme by giving the ULP and its incompetent bunch of sycophants, no passing grade despite its desperate ‘last minute cramming’. What about continuous and on-going performance assessment of the first 4 years 11 months of every term of office? Where have they been? Where do they go and what do they do for the four years eleven months of ÇLASS TIME’? And why is it only in the LAST MONTH of every term, the ULP Crooks come out of their hibernation to crame for the National Exams? NO PROMOTION FOR THEM!! THEY FAIL ALREADY. SO WE MUST EXPEL THEM FROM SVG POLITICAL SCHOOL COME THIS NOVEMBER ELECTIONS. GET RID AH DEM!!!
You can’t fool all of the people all of the time but you can easily fool enough people much of the time to stay in power for six elections in a row in a country whose education system is meant to produce largely foolish people.