Category Archives: Schools

General T&T, Schools

What a world

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By Raffique Shah
August 02, 2025

Raffique ShahI am very confused by the problems many teenagers face as they come to the end of one cycle or other of the education system. Many moons ago when my generation ended our “schooling” we had a clear vision of what lay ahead.

Those among us who failed the Secondary School Entrance Examination—and there were options there—a significant percentage would move into the secondary school system by attending one of the many private secondary colleges. They would sit an entrance exam to the college of choice and, once successful, their parents would make payments to have them educated. Others who found that cumbersome would opt for what in today’s language is known as business studies.
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Africa, Education, General T&T, Schools

Hear ye; hair ye: listen and be enlightened

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 24, 2024

Part I

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI wanted to add my two cents to Oke Zachary’s comments about educators freeing themselves from mental slavery as it related to the SDA dragging two students from their graduation because they cornrowed their hair (Express, July 14).

Zachary gave us an informative history lesson about the important role that hair plays in the lives of African people. He started with Bob Marley who had one of “the nappiest dreadlocks” and worked his way back to the inception of the cornrow style in 3,500 BCE before going to China “with the staircase braid from 1644 straight to the Caribbean with modern cornrows from the 1970s”.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, Schools

The politics of redemption

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 04, 2022

We must never forget that there is something within human nature that can respond to goodness, that man is not totally depraved; to put it in theological terms, the image of God is never totally gone.

—Martin Luther King, Jr, A Testament of Hope

PART II

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI had hoped to write about another aspect of the Foster Cummings debate, but other questions arose since last week which means I have to clear a lot of ground before I continue these observations.

Reading (or the explication of texts) is not so easy as many people believe it to be. A theologian goes to theology school to learn how to interpret theological texts (we call it exegesis). The lawyer goes to law school to learn how to read legal texts (whether the original intention or from a contemporary setting). Literary scholars go to graduate school to learn the most fortuitous way to examine literary texts.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, Schools

SEA Results Must be Published

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By Stephen Kangal
July 03, 2022

Stephen KangalPrimary students write an annual competitive SEA Examination that determines, inter alia, where the students are to receive their best secondary schooling of choice to foster their academic development and their career paths.

These results have been published since its inception.

First the PNM interfered with the CAPE scholarships criteria by cutting down the number and even tinkering with the allocation based on subjectivity.
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General T&T, Politics, Schools

The politics of redemption

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 27, 2022

Old pirates, yes, they rob I / Sold I to the merchant ships/ Minutes after they took I / From the bottomless pit / But my hand was made strong /By the hand of the Almighty / We forward in this generation / Triumphantly.

—Bob Marley, “Redemption Song”

PART I

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIn the 1970s I had the privilege of teaching the late Fr Henry Charles at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He was one of the most brilliant students I have ever taught. In fact, he was more brilliant than I in certain respects. I taught a course on West Indian literature, and he seemed to know everything about the writers we were discussing. I deferred to him on many occasions when difficult questions came up in class.
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General T&T, Politics, Schools

Bad teachers, bad parents

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By Raffique Shah
May 02, 2022

Raffique ShahGood news is hard to come by nowadays. So young journalists, spawned on a diet of blood, gore, corruption, crime, suffering and worse, have become nihilists without knowing what the word means. And readers of conventional newspapers and electronic media audiences, especially the misnamed “social media”, will not recognise a decent story if it hits them between the eyes, so immersed are they in the lies, half-truths and raw sewage that pass for information on the 5G superhighway that rules our lives, imprisons our minds with such stealth, we degenerate into clones, drones and assorted mindless, brainless creatures to the extent that when we look into the mirror, we see nothing, because there is nothing to see.
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General T&T, Politics, Schools, Violence

Prime Minister on school violence

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We can’t beat our way out of it

By Jensen La Vende
April 21, 2022 – newsday.co.tt

PM Dr Keith RowleyCORPORAL PUNISHMENT will not be the solution for school violence the Prime Minister said on Thursday as he responded to number of videos of school children fighting.

Speaking with the media at the Piarco International Airport on Thursday, Dr Rowley said a better approach must be used.

“There is no intention to beat our way out of this,” Rowley said when asked if the re-introduction of corporal punishment would be used to curb school violence.
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Africa, Education, General T&T, Schools

Suffer the little children

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 27, 2021

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeMy mother, Carmen Cudjoe (nee Batson), was born in Belmont in 1909. After spending her childhood years there, she moved to San Juan where she met my dad, married him, and moved to Tacarigua. Although my mother attended only primary school, she read constantly and wrote with eloquence and grace. In Tacarigua she was the secretary of most of the voluntary organisations there, such as the Garden Club and the Village Council.
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Crime in T&T, Education, Finance, Recession, Schools

In Defense of Teachers

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 29, 2020

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeAlberta Smith (not her real name), my dear friend, has been a primary school teacher for thirty years. She didn’t like last week’s article and didn’t put water in her mouth to tell me so. She sent the following response which I was free to reproduce once I omitted her real name. She wrote:
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Education, General T&T, Politics, Schools

“All Ah We in This Together…”

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 20, 2020

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeAs a teacher, I was interested in the exchange between Anthony Garcia, the minister of education (MOE), and Antonia De Freitas, president of the TTUTA, with regard to how best to continue teaching our nation’s pupils while schools are closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. The MOE wanted to “determine the extent to which students had access to learning materials while schools were closed” (Newsday, April 11) so it could determine the best platform to deliver online teaching for our pupils.
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