Laboratories are also crucial to more emphasis on scientific education
Education
By Jerome de Freitas (former lecturer and head of the Physics Department at the University of Guyana)
Stabroek News
April 26, 2007
In his article "Salvaging Science: the marginalization of scientific subjects in the school system" (Guyana Review March 2007), Dr Kenneth Hunte has comprehensively given the facts and circumstances which have led to the deplorable state of the teaching of science subjects in most of our state primary and secondary schools, and he has quite rightly pointed out the paramount importance of good scientific education to national economic development. He uses the term "marginalization" which to my mind is very appropriate and whether consciously or unconsciously is certain to have very negative consequences for the economic development of our nation. One has only to look at the tremendous advances in science and technology which have occurred across most of the world, particularly in countries such as China and India during the last 50 years to see that there is a strong correlation between scientific and technological development and economic progress. This could only have been achieved on the basis of sound scientific and technological education at all levels.
This marginalization has led to a de-emphasizing of the importance of the natural sciences (and I refer here to physics, chemistry and biology on which fundamentally all the rest of science depends) by the relevant authorities, Govern-ment and the Ministry of Education, as they focus on or substitute other subject areas in the mistaken belief that all will be well and good as far as national development and economic progress is concerned. History has shown that the ability of any country to effectively utilize its natural resources is heavily dependant on science and technology. Guyana is no exception. This neglect of the Natural Sciences in our schools (as Dr Hunte has pointed out only 3 of the nation's 7 sixth form schools offer the pure sciences at the level of the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE)) can only lead to a dearth of native scientific and technological talent in our country and consequent economic backwardness which can only be addressed by the importation of expensive foreign expertise. We seem to be already well on our way down this road.
Dr Hunte is certainly right in identifying the genesis of the decline in science education when students for the Secondary School Proficiency Exam (SSPE) - these were students who had failed the Common Entrance Exam - were allowed to take the exam with or without science. Clearly this would have had the effect of reducing the number of students taking science at the Caribbean Secondary Edu-cation Certificate (CSEC) Exam later on in their school careers. As Dr Hunte says, the abandonment of the CSEC/ISDA (Integrated Science Double Award) was the next serious blow to scientific education in 1994 which left the ISSA (Integrated Science Single Award) to become the most popular (though unsatisfactory in its quality of scientific education) choice of science subject at CSEC. It is a fair assumption that the justification for all this was that it made less demands technically on both teachers and students and the availability of laboratory apparatus. Sadly, when the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) stopped the ISDA in 1994 some schools stopped doing science altogether while others carried on with the unsatisfactory ISSA which is essentially a watered down and shallow version of ISDA. For the ISSA students do some lab work, but there is no final project. Its focus is mainly on biology with a smattering of chemistry and physics thrown in for good measure.
What Dr Hunte does not mention, and to my mind it is a serious omission, is that shortly afterwards another deadly blow was given to science education in that laboratory practical exams were abandoned for students doing the three pure sciences i.e. physics, chemistry and biology, something that had been the norm for years. The reason was the lack of laboratory apparatus and it is at this point that I find myself more than a little disappointed. Though I have no doubt that Dr Hunte is fully aware of the importance of having adequately equipped labs, it seems to me that he has failed to give this matter the emphasis it deserves. Not even in his list of recommendations, all commendable and relevant, does he mention this. The natural sciences are no science at all unless their laws and equations can be verified by experiments done in the lab and no theory, however mathematically elegant and beautiful, e.g. Einstein's General relativity (1915) or Dirac's quantum field theory (1928) is acceptable if it is not supported by the experimental evidence. As an aside, I think it was Wolfgang Pauli (of the Exclusion Principle fame) who said a theory may be "not even wrong" which is a nice way of saying that it is total rubbish! However, what is really important about lab work is that it can and should stimulate interest in, perhaps even enjoyment of, a subject imparting a sense of relevance of the subject to the real world. As Daniel Sanford-Smith Education manager of the U.K.'s Institute of Physics has observed "If we can help them (11-16 year olds) to enjoy physics at this stage, we will have a better chance of holding on to them through to A level". This highly desirable state of affairs is not going to be realized with shoddily equipped labs which appears to be the norm in most state schools.
The Secondary School Reform Program (SSRP) of which Dr Hunte was the director was a timely effort to correct this state of affairs. Lasting from 1995-2005 a number of Community High Schools (CHS) were rehabilitated and turned into General Secondary Schools (GSS) with well equipped science labs and competent lab technicians. Surprisingly, some of these schools in Berbice e.g. Vryman's Erven Secondary, Manchester Secondary are not sending students to write CSEC pure science subjects while long established GSS e.g. J.C. Chandisingh Secondary, Central Corentyne Secondary, lacking adequate labs and technicians continue to send students to write the CSEC pure science subjects. In these latter schools, one hears of serious irregularities with students recycling the School Based Assessment (SBA) lab reports of previous students due to a lack of proper laboratory facilities. There are even reports of CXC/SBA practicals being written by teachers which the students are encouraged to write in their own words in an attempt to camouflage the fact that it was not their original effort.
Further, projects given at the various levels are poorly supervised due to the incompetence of the teachers and as a result, students in the science stream are often encouraged to write business subjects which causes them to lose whatever interest they may have had in science. This is a truly disastrous state of affairs, at least in some areas, prompting one commentator to remark "the CXC/SBA practicals are a farce". Strangely, Dr Hunte makes no comment of the SSRP of which he was the director and one wonders whether he is aware of the situation mentioned above. Clearly at least in some areas, the SSRP is not having the impact it was intended to have. I believe that a 2005 World Bank report was not overly enthusiastic about the effectiveness of the SSRP.
The situation at the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE) which Dr Hunte points out is the institution with primary responsibility for the training of teachers for the nation's school system leaves much to be desired. Many CPCE trained science teachers are unable to effectively teach the CXC pure sciences as many of them achieve only a grade 3 pass at CXC which is not surprising as the level of work done there barely takes them to the CXC level. As Dr Hunte has quite rightly pointed out, such teachers are not adequately qualified to train students in the CSCE in the pure sciences. They need to be qualified to a "considerably higher level than the level of the CSEC". In fact, I found the paragraph of Dr Hunte's article under the caption "Effective Teaching and Learning of Science" most impressive and an excellent exposition of the technical requirements for good science teaching. Sadly, I believe that many teachers in the state school system would fall short of the high and proper standards that he has suggested. What all this suggests is a serious
underfunding of education, particularly science education, in the state school system. The remedy is obvious. At the very least more funds have to be allocated to improving teachers' salaries and providing adequate lab equipment where necessary and establishing a system of inspection (one of Dr Hunt's recommendations) to root out abuses whereever they may occur.
On the whole I think Dr Hunte must be commended for bringing this extremely important matter to public attention and he has made a number of recommendations all of which can be fully supported. However, apart from giving statistics of UG graduates in his Table 1, he has omitted to comment on several structural problems affecting the UG Natural Sciences program. Also, he has failed to mention some baffling regulations affecting teachers emanating from the Ministry of Education (MOE). Why, for example, is the MOE unwilling to give teachers time off and leave from schools to do a Natural Science program at UG while perfectly willing to do so for teachers doing education programs? It makes a nonsense of the MOE saying it wants teachers to be trained and qualified to teach the sciences. Why, also, does the MOE insist that the teachers trained at the CPCE wait two years before they can attend UG? It makes no sense: these people want to become trained graduate teachers as soon as possible. Perhaps more on this in a future article.
In conclusion, I would like to acknowledge the substantial contribution made to this article by Mr Michael Hackett and Mr Dwarka Shiwraj. Both have been Secondary school teachers and are familiar with the conditions in the state school system. Mr Hackett who graduated with distinction in physics in 1992 and in the process won the Vice-Chancellors medal is now a lecturer at the Tain Campus of UG. Mr Shiwraj is a retired secondary school headmaster and one of the authors/editors of "Science in daily life for secondary schools" and "Easy path science for primary schools". I thank them for their help.