Le Matinal: Blog: CPE Reforms - what vision of society?

Blog: CPE Reforms - what vision of society?
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Santosh Kumar Mahadeo (Guest Author) on Friday 13th of April 2012 - 15:15:00
 
What is the responsibility of government towards those who by the sweat of their
brow have reached a higher standard of living than others? No doubt the State
has a comprehensive, inclusive vision that, as a welfare State, must look after
the less fortunate on equal footing as the more privileged. But this government
encourages personal effort and rewards those who achieve according to what they
deserve. It is the cruelty of the bureaucracy that our workers cannot express
the vision of the government at the level of implementation.
Thus the more fortunate receive a 'more equal' treatment than the rest. A Royal
College Port Louis pupil is not expected to receive a better treatment than the
pupil of a private secondary school because the effort of the latter extracted
him from the elite and placed him amongst peers of the lesser achievement. Is
this hierarchy the cruel product of a discriminatory society or is this the
atavistic nature of all societies? Those who cannot situate themselves in the
fold of such an inclusive vision of government choose the private sector and opt
out the belt of the Welfare State system. The State encourages the creation of
schools like ' The Orchids, l'Ecole du Centre' in the same way as it promotes a
State financed system.
There is no discrimination in a system that places people in levels according to
the effort put in by individuals while providing positive discrimination
facilities to the weak and vulnerable. Where does the system fail? It fails in
the lack of skills of our teachers at different levels of the hierarchy. Our
teachers have been mostly trained to attend to the elite. Our parents do not
understand that different students of varying abilities must be taught in
different ways. While confessional schools seem to boast of being able to teach
pupils of mixed abilities, we must strongly scrutinise the SC results of those
pupils who were admitted in these schools with lower aggregate. Five years of
exposure to secondary education do not bring any substantial increment of
improved performance. Their SC aggregate is rarely worthy of praise. Our
teachers have butchered the ZEP schools and have not risen to the level of
competence expected from the investment made. At SC and HSC at least 40% obtain
an aggregate that shows poor results. Most of the poor performers and failures
belong to a hereditary generation of low ability students since primary
education. Our system is unable to reform the weak.
It is true that we cannot determine merit at an early age of 11. This government
has created all the opportunities to shift from one paradigm to another - it is
the implementation that delays because the vision is not clear in the minds of
those who are at the helm.
This country has the right to nurture an elite as long as it does not
discriminate against the weak. Our system needs to create breeding grounds for
innovators, inventors, people with imagination in the same breath as it fosters
the same dreams of the less fortunate to scale heights. There is no need to be
rich to perform well at school. But are our schools effective enough to provide
the best opportunities to all according to their different endowments?