A few weeks ago, addressing the Queen’s College anniversary celebrations (in a blackout), Dr Roopnaraine asked his audience (and by extension all Guyanese) to “embrace the idea that the quality of our life is dependent on the quality of life of others.”

He cited John Paul Lederach’s idea of ‘constructive social change’ and presented a compelling case for us to ‘aspire to a higher humanity.’  This editorial will explore one area in which this may be possible. Every day, most of us get up and go to work. Or, in the case of the unsung and unseen (mothers and other carers), we stay at home and work. Our children get up and go to school. There is a significant minority though that does not engage in work of any kind or go to school; a cursory glance at any newspaper will show that they tend to be the ones who dominate the news. The truants and drop-outs of one generation can very quickly become the misfits and criminals of the next. This much we all know and agree on and this experience is not peculiar to Guyana. These are common themes in all societies; newspapers everywhere devote many column inches to the social malaise of the under-educated and the unemployable (those who will not or cannot participate in the world of work).

Why, then, do we seem to have more than our fair share of this group? There are obvious (and overwhelming) historical reasons such as the gradual decay of the family unit, the collapse of the social infrastructure and the failures attendant on a poor and poorly administered country; the core problem, echoed in many key state sectors, is that even where the state can now provide better training for teachers, it cannot hope to retain them because of what they are paid and the conditions in which many work. The current principal at Queen’s College cited the “challenges of teacher shortages, teacher migration [and] rapid turnover of staff” in her address to past students.

There are also push factors which marginalise people who do not immediately integrate. These start perhaps earlier than we realise. Many countries now routinely administer sight and hearing tests to school-age children; they realise that it’s very easy to fall out of the system very early on if you can’t see the blackboard or hear the teacher. Dyslexia is often the underlying problem when children have difficulty reading, writing and spelling. A recent US government report suggested that as many as 15% of American students may have dyslexia, a condition which affects three times as many boys as girls. Some schools, even within the Caribbean, now have the ability to identify and address the most common forms of dyslexia (and other learning difficulties) and at least one specialist teacher to address them. We do not. The odds are that if you struggle to learn in Guyana, you will not stay in school and you will later struggle to find work; the Chief Planning Officer at the Ministry of Education recently cited ‘learning difficulties’ as one of the reasons why nearly 14,000 children dropped out of primary schools between 2004 and 2007. And the ‘pull’ factors of a career in crime or on the borders of legality are considerable: ready cash and, perhaps equally important, the kudos and support that membership of a gang brings.  If you slip through the system there is another well-trodden path to take. This is a huge social problem. We lack the expertise, the resources and perhaps even the energy to tackle it.

Parents, NGOs and even the media can rise to fill the void. Parents should pay close attention to their children’s progress at school in the early years. NGOs could perhaps try to tap some of the goodwill and expertise that exists in the diaspora; there must be Guyanese teachers overseas with these specialist skills who would be willing to teach to a short summer course here. Radio and television are well-established fora elsewhere for the dissemination of learning and learning support; we could copy some of the more successful initiatives. The print media also has a role to play: newspapers could donate space to appropriate tutorials that parents can use to assist children with learning difficulties.

Already, there are beginnings. Small signs of hope. The work by groups such as the Rotary to help young people with learning difficulties is one. The technical, vocational and remedial programmes offered by Mercy Wings are others. These types of initiative need to be extended and replicated across the country. It is simplistic to assume that everyone who is given the opportunity to learn will take it and that this will effect a magical transformation. But it is a start. UNICEF recently announced a research project to determine why boys are under-represented in our secondary schools and indicated that the findings would inform the basis of their future work here. These initiatives suggest a growing awareness that we cannot assume that all of those who are left behind do not want to progress. We must find a way to include them. Queen’s College, as its headmistress noted recently, has outperformed all other Caribbean schools for the last four years. There is, still, a will to learn and to engage, to participate and to progress, in this society. We must build on it.