EDITORIAL: Support our children
Successive governments have done their best to ensure that Barbadians are educated, whether with the building of more primary and secondary schools, with the introduction of new programmes and now with the expansion of tertiary education; and the excellence that has been continuously emerging from institutions of learning is testament to the hard work and dedication of our forefathers, educators and progressive governments.
The Government of Barbados has done much, given its limited resources, in an unlimited pursuit of development to facilitate the education of our young people in both academic and non-academic ventures. The reality is that in most other countries in the world, these opportunities either do not exist or are provided to a select number of recipients, usually through scholarships or grants where the competition for the final prize is fierce. Here in Barbados, these opportunities are offered to all and sundry regardless of background, aptitude or financial status.
However, we should also acknowledge that education does not end at academics. Children are now exposed to more external forces through travel and social media, to name a few, and their knowledge now encompasses a wide range of subjects and experiences over a relatively short period of time through the use of technology which is constantly being updated, that many of those from previous generations were not exposed to. These modern facilities have given rise to a new culture out of which has come persistent questions of the extent of cell phone use among the said children, whether corporal punishment should remain in these institutions and how to deal with a student population that is increasingly taking in information that is not always relevant to the classroom, but can affect the education process.
This is a sign that adults, especially those in charge, should be in a position to harness this knowledge to ensure that children become positive products of society. If children are left to decipher and translate the movie that might have violent and sexual content, for example, without proper adult supervision, then there is no guarantee that what the children translate to their friends and the rest of society would be positive. In recent times in Barbados, there has been a lot of debate about how children seem to be transferring what they have seen on television or heard on the radio to others that they interact with. However, the question remains, are the media solely responsible for what they are exhibiting to those who come into contact with them?
The deterioration of the extended family, and the fact that some families are quite large have long been touted as reasons for not paying enough attention to the problems that some children have to face or even their accomplishments, but this is no longer a satisfactory excuse for what teachers and society are left to deal with without the right amount of parental support. Involvement includes listening to what your children have to say, as well as to those who are in authority over them, and discussing problems with people who can help if these problems become too much to handle on their own. We must show support for our children if we want them to succeed.