Dear Editor:
Over the last few decades, the World began a love affair with Mathematics and, in general, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) to align with the digital revolution. With blitz and fanfare, policymakers extol the virtues of STEM. Curricula were changed and large sums of money have been and are being spent on programmes to produce workers to serve the digital economy. However, the changes made in the education system are simply cosmetic. They are tucked into a system that was built during the Industrial Revolution to produce factory workers. This system is archaic and is failing to serve humanity.
STEM is viewed as objective and factual. Teaching STEM subjects is invariably rigorous and procedural. However, STEM should be fun to learn, be contextural, and must connect to everyday experiences for students to appreciate its importance to their lives. The constant public broadcasting and devotion to STEM have led to its stigmatization as difficult, especially among female students. STEM was born in 2001 after US students performed poorly in Mathematics and Science among the industrialized nations as measured by an international test called the Program for International Student Assessment or PISA (Gov’t’s intent to transform education must address several fundamental questions, Stabroek News, May 15, 2022). Since then, successive US governments and the governors in the various States have spent billions of dollars and educators have tinkered with existing curricula with little or no change in the poor performance of US students. It has become a blame game from poor teaching to large class sizes.
Guyana is following in the footsteps, rather missteps, of the US. It was reported (Stabroek News, Sept 13, 2023) that President Ali stated “We are all very concerned about the performance in mathematics and we are not a government that will hide from the challenge. Because of our concern about our performance in mathematics, … I’m of the view that perhaps we need to in a much-targeted manner, [to] create additional hours for mathematics in the secondary school system, especially at the levels of the exam. Additional compulsory hours.” There is no shortage of solutions to reverse the poor performance of students in STEM. These include political sloganizing (e.g., No Child Left Behind), small class sizes, building more schools, food programmes, better payment for teachers, more school spending, and so on. These solutions have been implemented time and again without success.
The fundamental issue with today’s education and students’ poor performances is that we are using an outdated educational system that we patched up as the needs arose. Well, the system has become a patchwork that cannot be mended any longer. The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and Quantum Computing (QC) beg for a complete overhaul of the education system. Some of the attributes of this new system are engagement, nurturing creativity, cognitive accentuation, connection to the environment and local culture, and well-being. The call for creativity in the educational system is not new. There are two schools of thought on its implementation. One school asserts that we can teach creativity; the other asserts that creativity is part of who we are and is spontaneous. I support the latter with the caveat that we must provide the environment to spawn and tease out creativity.
President Ali is reported (Kaieteur News, Sept 6, 2023) to have stated “And for us also to move to see what is the available tool in terms of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and to incorporate AI into the delivery of learning outcomes in mathematics.” Rather than using AI to deliver outdated learning outcomes from a flawed education system, the writer suggests developing a new holistic educational system or framework to maximize the benefits of AI, IoT, and QC for 21st-century living. In this system, teachers will be coaches and facilitators rather than purveyors of an existing knowledge base that is currently available on a mobile device and easily accessed by today’s children. Students must use AI not to improve examination scores but to learn, explore, create, and enlighten. In the first stage, this requires students to learn how to interact with (prompt) AI.
President Ali has demonstrated political will and commitment to modernize education. The focus should not be on Math scores, memorized learning, and regurgitating information but on developing a new, reimagined educational system for Guyanese to flourish in the 21st century.
Yours faithfully,
Dr. Muniram Budhu
Professor Emeritus
