Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Dec 03, 2009 Editorial
Everyone recognizes that education is the key to development. However, the pursuit of education is not cheap. It costs the Guyana Government a huge sum each year. Last year the sum was said to be some $15 billion on schools and teachers in Guyana.
There are scholarships for the senior students and special fees for those lecturers that the system does not have at this time.
For example, there is a paucity of science and Mathematics and Science teachers in the system. If Guyana is serious about entering the technological age it would need to recruit such people and pay them salaries above what they pay the local teachers.
Indeed, there is a reliance on expatriate teachers. We have been known to recruit English teachers from Sri Lanka and other parts of Asia. We have also accommodated teachers from the United Kingdom who come here to gain experience working in a developing country, especially if they are furthering their studies and need the experience.
Whatever, the case, there is a great cost for the education that the country tries to impart to the younger generation. Many have benefited and continue to benefit. Hundreds have gone to Cuba at the generosity of the Cuban Government and people. Many are coming back and one can only expect that they remain.
We have the experience of sending many to the metropolis and paying hard earned tax dollars only to lose these people to the very metropolis. There are many secondary school students who lament that they are hard pressed to find their class mates in the home country. This is because those who accept the offer of scholarships to the West more often than not refuse to honour their obligations to the country. They decline to return.
Sometimes they feel that if they repay the cost of the scholarship then they would have satisfied the obligation. They do not consider the early years and those leading up to the point where they qualify for the scholarship. But a country must continue to pursue educational development. It must try to ensure that its brightest reaches the pinnacle of academic learning.
It is for this reason that a country tends to accept offers of scholarships for whatever source. In the not too distant past, there were scholarships to the Soviet Union and more latterly, the Russian Republics; China; Germany and to countries of the developed West.
The country has also been offered scholarships in South American countries like Venezuela and Colombia.
Now Guyana is being offered scholarships to Mexico. Of course there were scholarships to this country in the past. One is inclined to believe that with all these scholarships the country would be better placed to have skilled people but this is not the case.
There is the argument that the government should not seek scholarships, but instead should fully privatize education, that it should announce the programmes and allow the candidates to pursue the admission on their own and to pay all the relevant costs. What these people do not appreciate is that poor countries need to help its brains; that if left to their own devices these people would never attain the heights they could.
This was once the case in Guyana—in the colonial days when the brains were seen as those sent by the Mother Country. Indeed those who could not further their studies were the best they could be and actually contributed significantly to the development of others. They were the best teachers and public servants.
However, the sad reality is that there is no Mother Country to provide the leading brains. The result is that the country must seek to develop its own brains. On one occasion, Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy, when asked about the apparent waste of time to train people only to lose them to other countries, said that there is nothing Guyana could do except train even more.
This is where the cost accrues and it is a high cost.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
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