AL-HCS

My Experience of the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School.

A paper prepared for the Comprehensive Education Review Team by Don Mitchell CBE QC, dated 27 April 2009.

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I am grateful to have been invited to address the team on the subject of my views on how the present comprehensive education system is working. As you know, I am a retired lawyer and High Court Judge. I occupy some of my retirement time by teaching part-time at the High School. My subject is A-Level law for the CAPE programme. I teach one class for two hours a day, three days a week. My students are in Form VI A and B. I have been teaching only since September 2007. My exposure to the High School system is limited. However, I have my views, relatively uninformed as they are. I am grateful for the opportunity to share them with you.

I have about 15 students in all. They are aged 17-18 years old. They are in the final years of High School. Being Form VI students, they may be described as the cream of the cream of Anguilla’s education system. They are not intending to become technical persons. They aspire to academic and professional careers. They would not be doing law if it were otherwise. Besides, they have all assured me that they want to be lawyers, business professionals, doctors, and accountants. You would expect that, with these ambitions, their work product would be of a high standard.

My students have recently submitted their research papers for the 2009 School Based Assessment, part of their final exams. I have been reading them and grading them. The following are samples taken at random from five different essays written for this year’s CAPE Law SBAs. I have made no attempt to rank them or to select particularly poor paragraphs. I have not selected particularly bad essays. I picked the first five that came to hand, and opened the pages at random:

“Drinking under the influence of alcohol, poses a serious threat to not only the driver who is impaired but also the driver on the receiving end of the crash. As a result of a negligent act of driving whether alcohol consumption or otherwise, damages are awarded are great. “

. . . . .

“In order for one to succeed in defamation they have to make sure that their words were Defamatory, that the words refer to one and that they were published to at least one person other than to the claimant.”

. . . . .

“Therefore, with the technological advancement of cell phones became an integral role in our society and people have come to be extremely reliant on cell phones especially while driving. However, the convenience they offer must be judge against the hazard they pose.”

. . . . .

“The likelihood of harm would therefore be that if Mr B does not obey the 2 second rule, it would be more than likely that upon a sudden stop by Mrs A, due to no fault of hers, Mr B would crash into the rear of her car; The seriousness of the Injury would depend on whether Mrs A was wearing a seatbelt at the time of the incident or not; The defendant’s conduct, Mr B’s, would have no great social value unless the accident was of a different nature; finally, it would possibly have been more costly and less practicable for the defendant to avoid the accident at such a last minute by maybe swerving unto the side walk or further out into the road.”

. . . . .

“In evaluating such an offence to with the burning of domestic waste in Anguilla, there are offence which can deal with such an offence that has been embedded in its Criminal Code and the Nuisance Regulation.”

Most of these essays are painfully difficult to read. It is hard sometimes to understand what the student is writing about. Vocabulary, punctuation, syntax and grammar, the basic ingredients two of the “three Rs”, in these essays are poor. I continue to be dissatisfied at the inadequate level of English language usage. My concern is that these students will leave Anguilla’s high school system essentially uneducated. They cannot justifiably expect any degree of advancement in any of the careers they have been telling me they aspire to follow. In my view, they are the product of an unsatisfactory education system.

In my estimation, only 3 of my 15 students can either write or express themselves verbally above a Form II standard. The 3 exceptions are the children of professionals. I assume their parents put pressure on them to achieve and to excel in school. Those children who do not come from equally ambitious backgrounds are not being helped by the present school system. I had not realised that the Comprehensive Education System as it works in Anguilla is designed to ensure that only the children who are the beneficiaries of additional home schooling would reach an acceptable standard of basic education after they have graduated from the High School.

I am conscious that the secondary school system is not the only culprit in this failure shown towards the students of Anguilla. I understand that the children’s education problems start long before they reach the High School. Parents, who were too busy to read to them when they were very young, are partly to blame. The primary schools are graduating students who cannot read or write. There is frequently no adult present when the students come home after class to encourage them to study and prepare. Drugs, alcohol and pornography on the internet are pervasive. These adversely impact young persons in Anguilla when they are left to their own devices.

The paucity of the facilities at the High School is noticeable. The school library serves as the Form VI students’ lounge. The books are in the mess you would expect. I have not asked, but it is unlikely that any student, other than a sixth former, would dare to enter the room. The public library is no substitute. It is a place to go to gossip and to play computer games. The different reading rooms in the library are not invigilated when there are students in them, as they ought to be. The public library of Anguilla is distinguished mainly by the absence of worthwhile literature and reference works. There has been no attempt to build up a permanent collection of regional and international classics. There has for years been a culture among the public library staff that if a book is old then it must be deemed soiled and fit only to be disposed of. Several of my students have told me that they have not borrowed a book from the public library to read for either pleasure or instruction in over ten years. Their explanation is that there are no books worth reading in the library. There is no invigilated study room in the school, as there ought to be, for students who have no class to sit quietly and study. The result is that there are groups of boys and girls hiding in corners of the schoolyard laughing and chatting at all hours of the day. There is no supervision of the students in the school yard during breaks or at lunch time. This encourages them to engage in bad behaviour. It reinforces their perception that there are no consequences for bad behaviour. Foul language is commonly overheard, among boys and girls. There is no one to report their misconduct, and no penalty of any consequence if anyone did. Many of the teachers I meet are disillusioned and disgruntled. The teacher’s common room is a dump. I have never seen more than five or six teachers in it at lunch time or at any other time, except when the Principal holds meetings. The explanation for its present dilapidated state is that it is old, about to be replaced, and not worth repainting.

There is no necessity for the education authorities to compound all the wider social faults and defects by providing an education system that seems designed to ensure that the present generation of Anguillian students will not be able to hold their own when they grow up and go out into the real world.

The comprehensive education system as I have found it has been a disappointment. Anguilla’s children are being cheated out of a decent secondary education. Radical reform is needed. I am not qualified to make recommendations on how to reform the system. I will leave that for others who are more qualified than I am.

Responsibility

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RESPONSIBILITY – COMMONWEALTH DAY 2009

Speech to the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School, Campus B Assembly,

9 March 2009 – By Don Mitchell CBE QC

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,

First, let me say what an honour it is to be invited to address the future young leaders of Anguilla on Commonwealth Day, 2009.

As a British Overseas Territory, Anguilla is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. The Commonwealth is a voluntary grouping of nations with a common history of a relationship with the British people that goes back, for some of our countries, nearly 400 years.

England’s Parliament, however, is not the oldest one in the Commonwealth. England’s Parliament was interrupted when Oliver Cromwell abolished it in the year 1653. It was not to be restored for another seven years, in the year 1660. By comparison, Bermuda’s Legislative Assembly began its sitting in the year 1620. It has never been interrupted. That makes Bermuda the country in the Commonwealth with the longest continuously-sitting parliament, longer even that the Parliament of England. That is quite a Commonwealth landmark for a little West Indian country, a British Overseas Territory like us in Anguilla.

Today, my charge is to talk to you on the topic of “responsibility”.

For me, “responsibility” is more than just a philosophical concept. It is a vital attribute. We judge people and groups of people by how seriously they take their responsibilities.

Each one of us bears an individual responsibility for the consequences of our actions. As we grow older, we learn to value the virtue of responsibility in the people we relate to. We praise some people as being responsible, and criticise others as being irresponsible. We may even praise an institution as being responsible. We often call for “responsible government”.

As human beings we are responsible for our deeds. When we ask ourselves what we are responsible for, we are making an enquiry about our duties. So, a parent is responsible for caring for his child. An employee is responsible for doing her job. As citizens, we are responsible for obeying the laws of Anguilla.

Our responsibilities are divided and complex. If the doctor is responsible for prescribing the right drugs, we are responsible for taking them properly.

As thinking persons, we act most responsibly when we act on the basis of principle. When we fail to act rationally, we often act badly. We reason within a moral context. When we act immorally, we act irrationally. Even if sometimes we care nothing for the feelings of others, reason still tells us that we should. Reason can motivate us to take care of the feelings of others.

We have the power to feel and to desire. We feel sympathy for others who have been badly hurt. We feel shame and guilt when we make a mistake. It is this moral content of our power of reasoning that makes us support moral actions on the part of our leaders, and causes us to condemn unethical behaviour on their part.

As for ourselves, it is our power to respond to others that gives us a sense of responsibility for our actions. It is a sense of personal responsibility that allows us to work out why we feel the emotions of shame or guilt. We feel that the person who acts well towards others deserves to be happy. The person who acts badly, does not. She ought to feel remorse, and may even deserve to be punished. We feel that, if a person chooses to act selfishly, he deserves to be blamed. I choose to break the law, I deserve to be punished. When we see someone choosing immorality and irrationality, we feel he does not deserve to be happy.

Regardless of how we were brought up, we enjoy free will. We really are the authors of our own choices.

Responsibility involves the idea of duty. When we ask about a person’s responsibilities, we are asking what she ought to be doing, what her duties are. He is responsible for taking out the garbage. She is responsible for looking after her baby. The Planning Department is responsible for preventing private encroachments on the public beach.

We all tend to hold someone responsible when they fail to carry out their duties. The captain is responsible for the safety of his ship. He will be held responsible if there is a shipwreck. We feel that if he had taken his responsibilities more seriously, he might have avoided the shipwreck. We know that when we are given responsibility for something, we can expect to be held responsible if harm occurs.

Our actions impose risks on others. It is our duty to make amends when our actions cause harm to others. The person who caused the accident will have to bear the legal consequences of it.

So, how to end? Let’s try these.

When getting to school, don’t run carelessly across the street: Check for traffic. Show some self-control.

Remember, no i-pods or cellphones in class.

When your teacher gives you an assignment, take it seriously. Do it on time. Show how reliable you are.

When a $20 banknote drops from someone’s pocket, and temptation strikes, point it out to the person. Show your honesty.

Do your bit to make your school spick and span. When you see rubbish around, pick it up and bin it. Show a sense of pride in your surroundings.

All these things prove to your friends and teachers that you are dependable and trustworthy.

If you act responsibly like this, I promise to vote for you when you grow up and run in the elections for our House of Assembly.

Thank you.

Teachers Matter

I am humbled, if a bit mystified, that you have given me the honour of speaking to you on the theme for this year's World Teachers' Day.  I have been a teacher for barely one year.  Probably, every one of you in the room today is more qualified to speak on the subject than I am.  However, I am willing to accept the challenge, if you don't mind taking the risk of being bored.

First, I ask myself who is a teacher?  One answer that I like is that a teacher is a person whose profession it is to make a difference to children, to move student achievement forward, and to bring students to their highest potential.

If our teachers are to meet this definition, they have to be of the highest quality.  We must be both talented and motivated.  It would seem to me that quality is at risk when:

The profession is not competitive with other occupations in attracting such persons; or

There is a shortage of qualified teachers; or

The profession is not held in high regard by the society; or

There are fewer applicants than there are teaching vacancies.

The obvious solutions would appear to be to:

Improve teaching's general status; and to

Heighten teachers' competitive position in the job market; and to

Broaden the source of teacher supply to include well qualified people from other careers; and to

Provide special incentives for teachers whose skills are in short supply; and to

Give extra encouragement and support for teachers working in difficult locations

Teachers, like any other professional, need to have our knowledge and skills constantly developed.

Teacher education, induction, and professional development, are all essential techniques and tools.

Teachers require a lifelong learning framework.

As an aside, I do regret that I have never been offered any form of induction programme before I started teaching.  I have heard a rumour that such a programme exists.  Perhaps, someone thought I was too old to learn?

Teachers will matter when only the best candidates among us are selected for employment.  Teachers will not matter when there is no policy for recruiting, selecting and employing teachers.

There are questions that must be asked.

Is the tenured employment of a teacher in the public service, and the permanency this entails, conducive to encouraging professional development? 

Is there any incentive for continuously reviewing our skills and improving our practice? 

Are there in Anguilla any mechanisms for teacher evaluation and accountability?

Let it not be said of us, as George Bernard Shaw did, “He who can, does.  He who cannot, teaches”.

I want to tell you about Mr Rais.  He was my arithmetic teacher when I went to boarding school in Trinidad at 9 years of age.  This was a long time ago.  The main teaching tool then was the chalk board and a wood-backed duster to wipe it clean from time to time.  Mr Rais made me learn my tables.  He taught additions, subtractions and multiplications.  It must have been very boring for him.  He used to pace up and down the spaces between the desks as we did our class assignments.  He would peer over my shoulder at my exercise book. Every time he noticed an error, he would rap me on the top of my head with the wooden back of the duster.

As a result, to this day, I cannot multiply beyond 5.  The 10 times table was easy.  You just had to add a zero to the figure.  If I have to work out 8 times 8, I can only do it by adding 3 times 8 to 5 times 8.  Or, for variety, I might subtract 2 times 8 from 10 times 8.  I failed mathematics at O-Level twice.

I loved physics and chemistry from Form 1.  I asked for a chemistry set as a Christmas gift every year.  I did well in those subjects right up to Form 5.  Then, mathematics entered the picture.  I failed both physics and chemistry at O-Level.  When I think of that teacher, a special loathing rises in me.

Probably, if he were still living, and you asked him about those days, he would tell you that what he remembers is that, “For every person who wants to teach, there are 30 not wanting to learn.”

I am sure none of you makes a similar mistake with your students.  Unlike Mr Rais, you know that teachers matter.

A speech given, as a High School teacher myself, at a workshop organised by the Anguilla Teachers’ Union at the Rodney McArthur Rey Auditorium on Friday, 11 October 2008