Express article: The education of children of African origin

[abducted]

In today’s Express

[zoom rader]

What's the point ?

Tobago is 95% black and supported by a black goverment.

Whose to blame for Bago black folk failure ?

Indian teachers not teaching bago black folk?

PNM is a black goverment supported by PNM ppl

PNM higher ups make sure that their families and a selected friends attend the best schools.

Who got secret scholarships?

While other PNM ppl get food cards

[shake d livin wake d dead]

Op, take ah better pic so I could read nuh...I to poor to buy papers

[zoom rader]

Op, take ah better pic so I could read nuh...I to poor to buy papers

I borrow a paper to read the garbage.

Can't give PNM my money

[Rovin]

[zoom rader]

^^^ PNM kids doh want dem kind of music, its vibes and buju

[16 cycles]

even buju has commentary on some of it

..."when mama spend her last to send you to class....never you ever play...it's a competitive time for low budget ppl..."

[rspann]

Meem even know it have children of African origin in Trinidad. So dem Africans come Trinidad like the venes and making chirren ?

[zoom rader]

Meem even know it have children of African origin in Trinidad. So dem Africans come Trinidad like the venes and making chirren ?

Yeah dem come from St Vincent and Grenada.

[dogg]

Anyone know what's the point of the article?
What are they trying to say?
I honestly don't know.
It all seems like a rehash of random talking points lumped together.

[zoom rader]

Anyone know what's the point of the article?
What are they trying to say?
I honestly don't know.
It all seems like a rehash of random talking points lumped together.

PNM government in charge and their supporters kids are not performing.

That's what it is about.

Wait till they say that injun teachers not teaching PNM kids

[Ben_spanna]

A Child will learn when they want to learn.. despite the teacher , yes it is harder to learn without a good teacher, but if the child himself is not interested in having enough self discipline then its highly doubtful for that childs future... and that goes across the board for Any ethnicity.

[Slartibartfast]

Hold on a second. Principals decide who they let into their schools in form 1 based on what exactly? Are they implying that black children with good grades are shunned from prestige schools? How would they know the ethnicity of the child going on the name alone? How big of a factor is this?

Personally I think this problem would stem from the fact that these children are products of their environment and their environments, in many cases, leaves a lot to be desired. The majority of the issues seem to stem, once again, from out government's inability or refusal to tackle the actual underlying social problems. If they want to see a difference I would suggest starting with the following

1. (As mentioned in the article) good pre-schools seems like a good idea, but who would want to work in high crime areas?
2. BUT, they can reduce crime if they stop using tax dollars to fund local gangs (but this will obviously create a void)
3. BUT, they can fill this void if they find a way to provide meaningful employment to the people of these areas to fill that void (minimum wage road sweeping contracts not going to cut it forever. Maybe have mandatory education as part of the job descriptions to train the people to move on to other better jobs)
4. ALSO Create an environment that promotes innovation and entrepreneurship. Using narcissism and kickbacks to dole out government projects will obviously need to be stopped. Also, severely limiting the disposable income of the middle class by gutting the industries that have the highest paying jobs was a huge step in the wrong direction as people with disposable income will support non-essential startup services and products. And this is basically how capitalism supports innovation. Surely few will argue against that. But this still leaves they alluring motivation of trying to secure government contracts through connections.
5. BUT this can be curbed if they start punishing those that go against the ideals that are needed to promote a healthy community. That means talking about the elephant in the room. Corruption, corruption corruption. They need to start at the top and lead by example Start throwing people in jail for misuse of public funds and misbehavior in public office. This includes conflicts of interest (e.g. like receiving $1,000,000 per month for public entities to rent your office building or $100,000,000 a year for private prisoner transport when there are more economically feasible options). This goes across the board for both UNC and PNM. One is the devil's d!ck and the other his ballsack and we are too busy arguing which is which and which is worse. But of course nobody will want to tackle that. Because, how will the unimaginative circlejerking sycophants be able to survive in a world where they must act and be treated equally to the other creeds and races that exist here.

Sooooooo... TL:DR It is in the best interest of those that are able to make real change to continue to blame this disease on it's symptoms and use that as a reason to not bother to consider an actual cure.

[zoom rader]

^^^

It's all done in the minstry of education, the clerks have the power of placing who goes where. They often take orders from goverment Minsters via verbal instructions so no record can link them to the corruption.

Principals have to submit a list of selected kids to the minstry for who they want.

It is true that kids that score good marks are stepped aside in favour of selected kids.

That's how it is done.

[maj. tom]

^that same way PNM secret scholarship lists are decided. Skinning in NYC but want to comment on life here.

[Gladiator]

Finally somebody from the Afro Trinidadian community is looking for the root cause of the social problems in their community and addressing the symptoms of these major social issues that are manifested as gangs, murder and crime.

This is a good start, if the African community fails.... Trinidad fails. We cannot let that happen. PNM is NOT the answer!!!

[Slartibartfast]

^^^

It's all done in the minstry of education, the clerks have the power of placing who goes where. They often take orders from goverment Minsters via verbal instructions so no record can link them to the corruption.

Principals have to submit a list of selected kids to the minstry for who they want.

It is true that kids that score good marks are stepped aside in favour of selected kids.

That's how it is done.

Didn't know that. But my point is that no school should be as bad as the schools that we have down here. I'm still all for grouping higher performing students into higher performing schools. To do otherwise can be counterproductive. But even the worst schools should be able to provide a passable education the the majority of its students and seeing that students make the school what it is, the fact that there are enough students to create such bad schools means that there are larger underlying problems that need to be addressed.

And don't say it's the teachers. They play a part but they are not the determining factor. I've seen bad teachers is good schools and good teachers in bad schools. The determining factor for the performance in most schools are the type of children that go there.

[shake d livin wake d dead]

^^^

It's all done in the minstry of education, the clerks have the power of placing who goes where. They often take orders from goverment Minsters via verbal instructions so no record can link them to the corruption.

Principals have to submit a list of selected kids to the minstry for who they want.

It is true that kids that score good marks are stepped aside in favour of selected kids.

That's how it is done.

I know 5 school principals(2 primary/3 secondary) who ensured they got who they wanted to attend their schools...They were at so called prestige schools...They actually looked at names and financial backgrounds of the children to make their decision..Even if Kwame had good scores, they wasnt taking him unless his folks had the finances...

One principal came outright and said they don't want plenty kwames in their school because of how they and their parents tend to behave if they are to be corrected...

Believe it or not, it happens

[zoom rader]

^^^

It's all done in the minstry of education, the clerks have the power of placing who goes where. They often take orders from goverment Minsters via verbal instructions so no record can link them to the corruption.

Principals have to submit a list of selected kids to the minstry for who they want.

It is true that kids that score good marks are stepped aside in favour of selected kids.

That's how it is done.

Didn't know that. But my point is that no school should be as bad as the schools that we have down here. I'm still all for grouping higher performing students into higher performing schools. To do otherwise can be counterproductive. But even the worst schools should be able to provide a passable education the the majority of its students and seeing that students make the school what it is, the fact that there are enough students to create such bad schools means that there are larger underlying problems that need to be addressed.

And don't say it's the teachers. They play a part but they are not the determining factor. I've seen bad teachers is good schools and good teachers in bad schools. The determining factor for the performance in most schools are the type of children that go there.

Each religious school has thier our intake of selected kids, I think it's a 20% of their choise.

The other 80% comes from the minstry and as I said it is the clerks that do up the list according to the placement marks. Often they slip in kids at the request of higher ups. When they do this other deserving kids are sent a step down.

[zoom rader]

^^^

It's all done in the minstry of education, the clerks have the power of placing who goes where. They often take orders from goverment Minsters via verbal instructions so no record can link them to the corruption.

Principals have to submit a list of selected kids to the minstry for who they want.

It is true that kids that score good marks are stepped aside in favour of selected kids.

That's how it is done.

I know 5 school principals(2 primary/3 secondary) who ensured they got who they wanted to attend their schools...They were at so called prestige schools...They actually looked at names and financial backgrounds of the children to make their decision..Even if Kwame had good scores, they wasnt taking him unless his folks had the finances...

One principal came outright and said they don't want plenty kwames in their school because of how they and their parents tend to behave if they are to be corrected...

Believe it or not, it happens

Yup that's how it is done.

Once a religious school takes in a kid on the side the parents have to make financial contributions.

[Slartibartfast]

^^^

It's all done in the minstry of education, the clerks have the power of placing who goes where. They often take orders from goverment Minsters via verbal instructions so no record can link them to the corruption.

Principals have to submit a list of selected kids to the minstry for who they want.

It is true that kids that score good marks are stepped aside in favour of selected kids.

That's how it is done.

Didn't know that. But my point is that no school should be as bad as the schools that we have down here. I'm still all for grouping higher performing students into higher performing schools. To do otherwise can be counterproductive. But even the worst schools should be able to provide a passable education the the majority of its students and seeing that students make the school what it is, the fact that there are enough students to create such bad schools means that there are larger underlying problems that need to be addressed.

And don't say it's the teachers. They play a part but they are not the determining factor. I've seen bad teachers is good schools and good teachers in bad schools. The determining factor for the performance in most schools are the type of children that go there.

Each religious school has thier our intake of selected kids, I think it's a 20% of their choise.

The other 80% comes from the minstry and as I said it is the clerks that do up the list according to the placement marks. Often they slip in kids at the request of higher ups. When they do this other deserving kids are sent a step down.

Noted. but that is not my point. It just seems like everybody want's their child to go to a better school but don't want the schools that other children go to to be better. You ever see the kind of children in prestige schools vs junior secs (IDK what they call them now). The building isn't the problem. My school had a fraction of the facilities that other schools had. My mother was a teacher in one so I knew a lot of junior sec teachers, some of which I went to lessons by so I know that the teachers are not the problem (sometimes, but not the deciding factor). Which means that the actual children obviously play a huge factor in the performance of the school.

Here is another simple way of looking at it. There is absolutely no way that everyone can go to a prestigious school. Because that's just how numbers work. So the only way to ensure that children are not left behind is to make the performance of the other schools better. You guys know that there isn't a law that prevents children from non-prestigious schools from getting good grades right? Who cares what school you go to once you get a good education with good CXC and A'level results. Last time I checked employers that asked for CXC and A'level passes didn't discriminate against which school you went to. Otherwise that would defeat the entire purpose of the exams as a grading mechanism.

TL:DR The real focus should be on raising the performance of the poorly performing schools. This can only be done by fixing the society that the majority of these students come from.

[Dohplaydat]

Prestige schools perform because they parents put pressure on their children too and in those schools, being smart is encouraged. That's it, half of those teachers are lazy entitled f#%ks.

I taught one year in Arima Comp a decade ago. Wanna know how much form 1s can read and write and do basic math? Maybe 20% of the class.

More than half the Form 1s couldn't do this, 13+12.

Much more than half couldn't write a grammatically correct sentence.

[Ben_spanna]

Two secondary schools on Mucurapo road that both end around the same time, when they are both dismissed there’s such a difference in behavior. One school the students walk out and do so in quite a civilized manner, the other school when they are let our resembles a Wild herd of animals that trample everything in their path and interfere with peoples cars while they stampede between the traffic.

There is a huge difference in behavior.....

[rspann]

Slartibart has it 99% correct. A very good analysis with only one correction needed in my opinion. Point no 3 ,Nothing fills the void in those areas. The guys who joins gangs are the ones who will not want meaningful jobs ,they will find fault with every aspect of the job and the employer. They are very lazy and have been so for so many years it's in their DNA now. They blame everything and everybody for their situation and how people don't hire them when they see they from certain areas , but they never blame their attitude and behaviour.

[Rovin]

didnt some schools actually asked for a police presence inside d schools & garcia say nah we doh need to go dong dat road ....

[paid_influencer]

Well I read the whole article in the OP.

It started off well. Early childhood education is a proven means of getting kids to higher achievement levels. Universal, compulsory and free preschools will help children in at-risk communities (both African and Indian children in those communities) do much better.

Then the authors go on an agenda-driven rant about top schools not accepting under performing students. The current system is 80% of intake based purely on test scores, with the remaining 20% selected by the denominational board.. From my experience, the 20% from the board tends to be more ethnically diverse - including many children that have achievements in athletic and cultural spheres. The overall mix tends to benefit all students in the school.

The need to racialize the issue is counter-productive. "Children of Indian origin" and "Children of African origin" are made-up terms that do not well describe any cultural group. Most, if not all, communities are mixed ethnically and you will find achievement or underachievement is linked to community more closely than race.

The other thing to mention is crime. If teachers do not feel safe to go to gang-affiliated school, that is a problem. If children are losing parents due to crime, that is a problem. If the social values see a zesser lifestyle as acceptable, that is a problem. If children believe bullying is a way of life, that is a problem. And let me stress those problems are community-based and affect all children in the community - Indian, African and Mixed.

[rspann]

Two secondary schools on Mucurapo road that both end around the same time, when they are both dismissed there’s such a difference in behavior. One school the students walk out and do so in quite a civilized manner, the other school when they are let our resembles a Wild herd of animals that trample everything in their path and interfere with peoples cars while they stampede between the traffic.

There is a huge difference in behavior.....

Shitkickers say they like hyenas in the African jungle.

[zoom rader]

Slartibart has it 99% correct. A very good analysis with only one correction needed in my opinion. Point no 3 ,Nothing fills the void in those areas. The guys who joins gangs are the ones who will not want meaningful jobs ,they will find fault with every aspect of the job and the employer. They are very lazy and have been so for so many years it's in their DNA now. They blame everything and everybody for their situation and how people don't hire them when they see they from certain areas , but they never blame their attitude and behaviour.

Nah you wrong.

The parents created the kwame monster. The environment is also to part blame for kwame upbringing.

Good parents will go all out to make sure kwame has good behaviour and goes to the best schools.

PNM parents could not care less about their kids, they want to know when is the next buju show and army fete. Most are child mudda and fadda. Very few PNM ppl marry or have a stable family home.

Put a kwame baby in a non PNM home till 18 and keep him away from PNM type ppl and you will see the difference.

[ProtonPowder]

the article completely misses the academic excellence of hindu and muslim students in convents and presbyterian prestige schools

is what i saying for years, is about the culture more than the race

when i was in naps, it had students who came from point fortin that assimilated well into the school culture and went on to get additional scholarships and study engineering.

students of 'africian origin' getting in on merit and excelling as they should. If he had instead gone to vessigny because of bad SEA performance, his education may have turned out different

tl;dr is the culture of the bubble you grow up in, not race

[FrankChag]

the article completely misses the academic excellence of hindu and muslim students in convents and presbyterian prestige schools

is what i saying for years, is about the culture more than the race

when i was in naps, it had students who came from point fortin that assimilated well into the school culture and went on to get additional scholarships and study engineering.

students of 'africian origin' getting in on merit and excelling as they should. If he had instead gone to vessigny because of bad SEA performance, his education may have turned out different

tl;dr is the culture of the bubble you grow up in, not race

Exactly.. thank you.