Never waste a good crisis

The Caribbean has been urged by a professor of education to utilise the good effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting closure of schools.

Director of the School of Education at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus, Professor Joel Warrican, said now is the time to investigate conditions that have plagued the education system and implement practices that remove unnecessary stress from teachers and students.

“Let us not think that the adversity evident in education in the COVID era only affects the have-nots. We cannot think that once we have done some good, such as providing devices and offering one-off training to teachers, that we are absolved of responsibility. Let COVID-19 and the closure of schools be our tolling bell,” he said.

Among the issues Warrican discussed were the unhealthy obsession with examinations, systems that are unsupportive of students, inadequate systems of supervision and professional development for teachers and undesirable student behaviours across the board.

He was a panellist on Tuesday, at a virtual UWI forum entitled, ‘Mind the education gap - Schooling in the Caribbean during COVID-19’.

The professor explained that the pandemic has brought some “transparency” to what happens in the classroom.

He pointed out that students from all backgrounds are feeling the effects of an education system that for quite some time has been failing a large proportion of the region’s students.

“In the COVID-19 period when students are already stressed about having to access schooling in an unfamiliar, non-traditional mode online, the examination culture kicks in, in a way that expresses our overdependence on this approach to assessment,” he said, adding that the examination system is a remnant of the colonial past that many acknowledge has had its day, but none seem willing to discard.

Warrican reasoned that the pandemic presented an opportune time to rethink assessment and pay attention to the learning preferences of students.

He explained that there was a misconception that students would be happy to switch to online learning because technology is involved.

“There are many students who are excelling in in-person classes but who are now struggling in the non-traditional setting of online classes and conversely, there are students who were disengaged and unmotivated in the in-person classroom, who are now flourishing in the online setting - they are self-motivated and interested in learning,” explained Warrican.

Additionally, student behaviours such as tardiness, absenteeism and aggressiveness which are labels often placed on underprivileged children are being detected across student populations.

He also argued that support and supervision of teachers was weak and difficult to achieve before the onset of COVID-19 in the region and it continues to worsen.

With the training received, he said teachers and administrators failed to implement effective systems and the expectation that said training is sufficient for the online environment is not tenable.

However, he highlighted that with classrooms now at home under the scrutiny of parents, some teachers have been propelled to raise the bar.

Warrican urged governments to consider other types of disasters in their COVID-19 recovery plans, primarily because the region is disaster prone.

“Later on in the year, we will be exposed to hurricanes. We have in one country an active volcano and all of these bring different conditions to the fore. Today, we have a high-tech response to the pandemic through online, but tomorrow, our response may actually have to be low-tech because all Internet towers might be down,” he reasoned.

judana.murphy@gleanerjm.com