Blog: Narrow political Bias of the MMM

The refusal of the Opposition to side with government on the Education Amendment Bill is motivated by narrowly political compulsion.

Politics is the art of masking. It is the sovereign game of double talk - one for the public and the other the parochial party interests. Obeegadoo finds that the amendment proposed will not solve the real problems of CPE - a platitude that needs no further explanation.

The amendment Bill lacks an invasive, deeprooted force to reduce failure at CPE, convert memory testing to testing of thinking skills, to improve literacy and numeracy skills in our children.

In fact the ambitious objectives denied to the Bill largely overweigh the capability of any single amendment to solve a multitiered, plurifaceted problem like the CPE.

Obeegadoo is like the fanatic who says the world has to be destroyed and built over again because there are too many road accidents, that the whole bed has to be burnt because there is a broken spring.

The incommensurate ambition of Obeegadoo’s aim would make a mockery of any amendment which is piecemeal. Was Bunwaree’s aim to find a panacea to solve all the problems of CPE?

Did Obeegadoo find in the abolition of ranking and the conversion of star schools into Form 6 colleges a solution to the problems of CPE? With the score A of being equal to 75 marks, the examination made assessment uninspiringly flat for the elite without being necessarily accessible to the learners with difficulties.

Failure rate did not dampen. Teachers opted to skip important parts of the syllabus like essay- writing because there was no ground for challenges, no need to outshine one’s usual self. This reform denied a cultural reality which forms part of our egalitarian society.

Meritocracy is an incontrovertible characteristic of the Mauritian ethos. This is what has allowed a few to emerge above the rest. The elite is not necessarily an elite by heritage.

If money, power and connections favour some, meritocracy has allowed the simple and the poor to scale heights otherwise inaccessible. What the CPE with hurdles does is to provide a state-supported structure that gives credibility to the effort of either rich or poor.

The capitalistic-cum-social democracy that Mauritian economy has been since independence has treated all as equal despite huge disparities, but has given the opportunity to everybody capable of making the appropriate effort to earn what he deserves.

If the State, the external world does not acknowledge your effort, you are of no consequence. This is what has kept ranking going on however cruel it is.

Obeegadoo’s proposal is ideologically sound, but not culturally realistic for a patriarchal, country that has known 150 years of indentured labour. When educational policy is not in harmony with culture, educational reform fails.

If we were to take another example, can governmental education policies be implemented in a country that cultivates prejudices against the woman?

How will EFA fare in a backward country that gives an inferior status to a woman?

The opposition of the MMM to Bunwaree’s education amendment is an act of hypocrisy to shelve the proposal, postpone action so that the status quo may preserved. The overhauling of the CPE system needs to take place part by part. The parent is the final judge.

It is too facile to throw the blame of MMM’s electoral defeat in 2005 to Ramgoolam’s communalistic campaign. In fact this blame can be attributed to both adversaries.

The MMM is so obsessed with its superior wisdom that it has become blind to a reality that is silently borne by many voters. These voters vindicate their rights on Election Day by a cross at the right place. Many governments have been felled by their wrong educational policies.

If reforms take place by parts, parents have the time to adapt themselves to new conditions. After banning tuitions in Std 4, tuitions would disappear from Stds 5 and 6. But banning is not enough. Bunwaree has forgotten to take parents in his stride. His artless smiles dissimulate a ‘democratic’ dictator who thinks everybody is right when he is right.

Little by little, even if piecemeal, the reforms at CPE will take more time than whatever any document commending reforms can prescribe.

The back and forth movement will go on till we realize that we have a responsibility towards all children, that no elite should survive by treading on the dead bodies of the weak, that meritocracy is not a complete philosophy till all can claim equal chances of taking what the state offers. Today all our children are not in a position to take from the state the best of what it gives.

Bunwaree’s amendment forms part of a whole battery of mini strategies to overhaul a system which cannot be wrecked in one fell swoop to be regenerated by a newfangled system.