Crisis in Mathematics Education

I rarely speak authoritatively, but I am fairly confident in asserting that Trinidad and Tobago will not and cannot become the financial hub of the Caribbean without a more mathematically literate, i.e. numerate, population. The report on the performance of students of Trinidad and Tobago on the 2008 CSEC Mathematics examination, which is disaggregated from the rest of the region’s because of the compromised examination of last year, makes for interesting and alarming reading. The report, downloadable from CXC’s website, states on its first page that of the 20,000 or so T&T students writing the General Proficiency exam in mathematics last year, 47 percent of the candidates ‘passed’, i.e. achieved Grades I – III and 40 percent of the candidates scored at least half the available marks. First interesting mathematical fact – of the students who passed there exist a small but not insubstantial minority, 7%, who scored less than 50% on the examination. This is significantly better than the rest of the region where the overall pass rate is an abysmal 37 percent with only 28 percent scoring more than half of the marks. However, for a nation whose leader hopes to develop it into a serious destination for financial services, it is far from satisfactory.

On the Paper 2, which requires students to demonstrate solutions not merely shade answers, only 33 percent of candidates in T&T scored at least half of the marks. The scale of the tragedy becomes apparent as you read through the rest of the report detailing the errors, mistakes and lack of mathematical understanding. On the very first question which assesses fundamental mathematical skills such as students’ ability to perform basic operations on mixed numbers, solve problems associated with income tax, calculate a percentage of a derived quantity and write as a percentage the ratio of two quantities, only 15 percent of students were able to get a full score, the most for any question, yet the overall mean score of which was less than half of the total. In fact only for 3 out of the 14 questions on the paper is the mean score more than half of the total available for the problem, and in exactly one case does it cross 60% of the total for the problem, and this for an optional question attempted by 46% of students. Further, in the optional section the mean score is less than 30% of the total score for 4 out of the 6 problems.

As part of their regular cycle of curriculum renewal and in response to regional concerns and demands, especially CSME, CXC is set for a major revision of its CSEC examinations in 2010. The Basic proficiency certification will be eliminated in all subjects. This will add an additional four to five thousand students annually to the pool of students taking the General and Technical proficiency examinations. In mathematics, the structure of the Paper 2 will change ever so slightly but in a way that will have significant consequences. In the optional section students’ choices will be reduced to picking two questions from four where they now have a choice from six. This will make the paper more psychometrically sound in that having to match fewer items for difficulty will improve the assessment instrument’s reliability. It will simultaneously make the paper more difficult for many students who will have to learn more mathematics than they have had to in the past in order to get a good grade. From the perspective of mathematics education that’s a good thing.

Content wise however the mathematics syllabus resembles very much ones from the late 80’s and early 90’s. The syllabus is heavily weighted in favour of students with good algebraic manipulation skills, note, not necessarily mathematical understanding, while items relating to geometrical reasoning, quantitative literacy and statistical decision making continue to be under-represented. There are no objectives at CSEC level related to topics in discrete mathematics which together with the calculus provide the foundations for work in all computer related and many statistical disciplines, especially those related to finance, industry, and manufacturing. The rationale for this omission is based on the generally accepted belief that the majority of teachers across the region, many without sufficient training in mathematics or mathematics education, would not feel competent to teach these topics.

Further, the syllabus content will not help to resolve what has become an annual complaint of CAPE mathematics teachers in T&T and regionally: that a great many students experience significant difficulty in smoothly and successfully level-jumping and making the transition from CSEC to CAPE mathematics. It is as if their performance on CSEC math was not a sufficiently good predictor of their ability to cope with CAPE mathematics, much as students’ CAPE results do not seem to be a reliable indicator of students’ ability to cope with mathematics in post-secondary institutions. CXC comments on the former in their 2007 CAPE report, recommending that schools need to institute “a more effective screening process…to reduce the number of ill-prepared candidates.” It seems like they are attempting to pass the buck and the blame back on to schools, who indeed appear to be relying too heavily, if not in some cases exclusively, on candidate’s CSEC scores for admittance to their CAPE programmes. Indeed, the research literature consistently shows that when assessments of students’ learning are frequently, closely and clearly aligned with instruction, students’ collective prior performances on these teacher-made instruments are often better indicators and predictors of students’ future achievement and accomplishment than one-off assessments for certification or admission purposes administered by external agencies unless these are directly related to tasks that students will be performing in the future.

After 30 years of CXC’s existence and in today’s hypercompetitive globalized markets to have a regional pass rate in a critical gate-keeping discipline such as mathematics of 37 percent with only 28 percent making more than half of the marks is almost inconceivable. Certainly some of the blame lies in our inability to willingly move beyond our colonial heritage and the damaging legacies of its education system, some with the crises of Caribbean family life, the unavailability, under and ill-timed preparation of mathematics teachers at all levels, and some with students themselves. None belongs to CXC whose ‘business’ is neither teaching nor learning but the assessment and certification of educational accomplishment, or lack thereof. The changes in the mathematics syllabus, effective from next year, are not likely to improve the dismal statistic cited above. It is very likely that the regional pass rate figure will fall in 2010, largely due to the influx of candidates who previously would have written the Basic examination and as teachers and students adapt to the new requirements. Numerically however more students will likely achieve passing grades. This rate however will paint a clearer picture of the state of mathematics education among students in T&T and the wider Caribbean.

So how do we get there? How do we become the financial hub of the region? Firstly we’ve got to set the bar high…“One hundred percent pass rate in mathematics by 2020 (without cheating)!” It only sounds impossible now. Next we’ve got to recruit new and promising talent into mathematics education, inspire, nurture, train and retrain our mathematics education fraternity and address the ways mathematics is taught to every type of student and assessed at all educational levels. Perhaps we need to examine our national curriculum, not to create a new assessment or certification system, but to put into place a sustainable framework for guiding mathematics educators’ thinking about mathematics beyond the sometimes limiting if not disabling constraints of the CXC curriculum. Perhaps we need to imaginatively re-construct a mathematics curriculum that is more appropriate to the needs, desires, realities, and often painful contradictions of life in Trinidad and Tobago. We will need money, ideas, innovation, people, prayer, persistence, and perseverance. Can we get there by 2020? Can we afford not to? You do the math…

Liberating Hope from SEA selection

This article is a response to but one aspect of Ms. Robyn Gillezeau’s commentary published in the online version of the Guardian on Friday January 2nd 2009 in which she opens the Pandora’s box of the 20% selection in the SEA with the concept of beneficence. I want to see what comes out. In the opening to a poem, Majestic on its Verdant Hill, about one of my alma maters, I placed the following question to a fictional form one student, “Yuh think you choose Pres. or Pres. choose you?” The answer in some sense has always been both and neither. In Trinidad and Tobago at present, and for close to half a century, some students choose their secondary schools while others are chosen by their schools, however this selection/non-selection is symptomatic of a much larger, deeply rooted ideology, indeed pathology, of our educational system and social imagination.

Let me be clear and direct. In my opinion selecting the 20% is neither arbitrary nor benign and where this selection is concerned, both charity and injustice begin at home. From an insider’s perspective I write about what I saw and remember about how the 20% was chosen having accompanied school officials to the Ministry to perform this exercise. I saw students relegated to begin at their third choice school because they didn’t make the 80% cut-off for their first choice school. Such students had already been by-passed in that school’s 20% intake and had the ‘impudence’ to place our school as their second choice. Such impudence was met with bypassing, a glancing further down the list for others with less marks who desired us and so merited more consideration. I also saw students with good grades from rural primary schools whose names were not on ‘the Principal’s list’ of elect, bypassed with the sleight-of- reasoning that perhaps it might be better that they go to school closer to where they lived. I remember one instance of a discussion about a student who, should he be on the 20% list would be selected in the hope that his father, a former national cricketer might assist the College team. Quid pro quo? Alas, I do not know.

I have also seen instances where it works as Robyn suggests – when the logic of beneficence rationalizes the selection of individuals with siblings already attending the same school, or the children of staff members, or some other truly exceptional circumstance. However in the years that I participated in this practice, these were never more than 3 or 4 students. Indeed, I would argue that Principals probably could annually make a successful case, a written submission, for the inclusion of about 5-6 students in such exceptional circumstances, 5% as opposed to 20%. This would be more transparent and lend some accountability, making the process appear to be, if not actually be, more just. The logic of beneficence, however, contradicts Robyn’s argument regarding parental choice and student fit since it problematically assumes that all siblings would necessarily ‘fit’ as well within the same institution.

I am very much against the practice of legacy preferences, a form of nepotism, in the public and private spheres, especially where public funds and public goods are involved, as is the case with education and which Robyn suggests “leaves precious few places for any new benefactors.” Such closed and exclusive systems for the movement and transfer of power and privilege worry me greatly. In any one year, for those denominational schools which have been around for a while, there are always vastly more individuals seeking backdoor admission than there are places. Which legacy child is to be chosen and how the benefactors are ranked ought to concern not only alumni but all of us. One of my especial concerns, as a former teacher, is the phenomenon of the culture of entitlement that seems to be associated with that of legacy children. Indeed I’ve heard of cases where students have declared that they would be attending a particular prestigious secondary school long before marking would have been completed.

To be fair however I must also critique the systems of fiscal management at the level of the board or school Principal and the Ministry of Education that might necessitate denominational schools turning to the benefits of legacy admissions to make ends meet or achieve their strategic goals. In this regard perhaps the Ministry needs to be more timely in its release of sufficient funds to schools and in demanding accountability and answerability on how these monies are used. In addition, the denominational schools must become more judicious about how the funds that they do receive are spent, especially in the present climate of belt-tightening. I note with sadness the financial difficulty of another alma mater, the TML school, and that of the other privileged institutions at elementary, secondary and tertiary levels in Trinidad & Tobago, the Caribbean and abroad who engage in hypercompetitive one-upmanship educational arms-races. As any mathematician, philosopher, biologist, economist or social scientist will point out all arms races are materially expensive, unsustainable and end in failure, poverty and misery for a majority. The academic arms-race that has characterized education in Trinidad and Tobago post-Independence, of which the SEA and associated practices are a part, but which has intensified in the last two decades in the form of unnecessary extra-lessons, purchased exam papers and other forms of cheating and intellectual dishonesty must end. How it will end remains to be seen, though the current trajectory is not hopeful.

Since leaving teaching at the secondary level I have reflected often about those 20 odd names from each year belonging to real 11 and 12 year old boys and girls who didn’t get chosen on the 20% but whose marks in a truly meritocratic system would entitle them by right to a place in the school of their choosing. I wonder where they are and what they are doing now? No one has spoken for those disenfranchised in the process and it disappoints me greatly to read Robyn’s commentary, another graduate and disciple of a privileged but unjust institutional framework, seeking to maintain the oppressive status quo. Imagine instead of an academic competition an international beauty or sporting competition say (or an election), in which after a top-ten were ranked based on performance alone, 20%, a mere 2 representatives, were replaced with others based on their relationships or familiarity with the sponsors, judges or other powerful and dominant interests or their country’s previous history in the competition. In order to make it more real, imagine that one of those replaced was a relatively small, perhaps little known island competitor. We would rightly be outraged. We would not accept it and we would be vocal in our denouncement of the injustice. Yet we work so hard at maintaining our current system of institutionalized disenfranchisement that does just this annually to hundreds of our children – sons, daughters, brothers and sisters. Why is this?

On the other hand, imagine that you were one of those ‘lucky’ enough to have been selected, either in the original ten or as a result of the system of unjust replacement. It would not be in your interest to speak out or against the system or institution (or its leaders), no matter how oppressive to others, from which your benefits and privileges, or those of your associates or desired associates, are derived, especially if you were still deriving benefits, desired to derive benefits for yourself in the future, or if you knew that someone coming after you, might require access to those benefits and privileges. Such a system would set up a scenario of inter-generational public silences around the issue. This code of silence would be strictly enforced. It would take an extraordinarily ‘foolish’ person to speak against such a system.

This discussion of injustice and disenfranchisement depends critically however on the knowledge that one has been or is being disenfranchised or is oneself responsible or complicit in the disenfranchisement of others. Where and from whom is this knowledge to come? Students (or their guardians) who are disenfranchised do not generally know what goes on outside the writing of the examination and the announcement of the results and in those cases where they knowingly benefit they do not consciously or publicly announce this fact. Principals, board members and staff members of denominational schools who do the choosing have no obligations at present to account or be answerable to the publics they proclaim to serve nor to the Ministry of Education on those they have selected/not selected and why. Indeed, unless you’ve sat in that bright cold fluorescent air-conditioned backroom in the Ministry of Education and held the continuous ream of computer paper, pencil, and boys and girls’ hopes and futures in your hands, one cannot really know how the 20% is chosen beyond the anecdotes and guarded whispers we share and hear. While under no obligation to account for their choices publicly, neither, to my knowledge, are those who know prevented from doing so by any legal mechanism such as a non-disclosure agreement. Indeed, what has perpetuated this unnatural silence, around what is sure to be an inflammatory issue, are the vested interests and the interest of maintaining those interests of the parties in the know and partly our own desires not to know too much about from whence our benefits our own and others’ oppressions derive. Continued silence however in this context renews our unholy covenant and complicity with a socially unjust regime.

Though I am not always on the same page, I endorse Pope Benedict XVI, and a myriad of others who have called for the overhaul and creation of more just alternatives to any and all unjust economic and social structures. In his message for the World Day of Peace he says, “sooner or later, the distortions produced by unjust systems have to be paid for by everyone." It is already later and we have already paid dearly for the distorted logics we have built our educational systems upon. We have already been given “permission to mash up d place” – to begin the process of deconstructing, decolonising and as necessary dis-mantling those aspects of our unjust institutions, our douendoms, that de-humanise and hide our fully human identities – as a prelude to remaking something better, for all of us, every creed and race, together. The current debate around the practice of school selection which took off in early December last year and the earlier public outrage at the Culture Ministry’s lack of transparency in its award of scholarships are healthy signs of a maturing public dialogue. However, it will be our continued individual and collective willingness and courage to open the other Pandora’s boxes in our midst and confront what lies therein that will determine how long our Hope must yet slumber.

Winner-Take-All

What do the Olympic Games, the recent ‘leaking’ of the CAPE 2008 examinations and admissions to ‘prestige,’ or more accurately, ‘privileged,’ educational institutions in Trinidad and Tobago (and elsewhere) have in common? They are all instances where ‘cheating’ – defined here as the use of an agent for enhancement of performance or public perception of performance that is not potentially available to all competitors – can be extremely beneficial to the individual, socially, politically and especially economically. Indeed, it is that the differential rewards between the few winners (and many losers), for what are often relatively minor (though by no means insignificant) differences in effort, ability and performance, are so staggeringly disparate – multimillion dollar endorsements, elite academic credentials and concomitant access to lifelong higher earning potential and further social and cultural capital that can in turn be exchanged and translated into economic capital – that drives the intense, unproductive, wasteful and in some cases illegal and dangerous competition that is a defining characteristic of “winner take all markets.”

Winner-take-all markets are characterised by Robert H. Frank and Phillip J. Cook, Professors of Economics, Ethics and Public Policy at Cornell and Duke Universities respectively, as markets in which rewards are allocated primarily (if not solely) by relative performance, rather than by absolute performance, and, in which butterfly-like effects translate initial small differences in performance, like a hundredth of a second or a fraction of a mark, into substantial differences in opportunities to earn and learn. In the case of professional athletes, such as David Beckham, Tiger Woods and Kobe Bryant, the economic rewards and opportunities of being at the top of their fields are hundreds of times greater than an ‘average’ player and provide even greater opportunities to earn. For students seeking entry to elite, prestigious and high status universities the rewards are not only greater earning potential over their lifetime, but include access to networks of peers and associates who are tied into local and global networks of power and influence, and increased likelihood of gaining entry into prestigious, or high status graduate schools and higher starting salaries. At the local secondary level the same is (largely) true for students admitted to ‘prestige/privileged’ schools in that they increase the probability that they will successfully translate their relatively small performance differences on the SEA into substantial social and economic rewards and be connected to networks of powerfully placed peers. Prior success breeds later success via self-reinforcing, re-inscribing, positive feedback loops. What could possibly be wrong with this?

Winner-take-all markets arise in corporate and consumer (as opposed to producer) capitalist arenas where profit maximization logic and policies that place no restrictions on greed encourage individuation. When (free) markets work they (generally) allow the most talented people to meet the needs of the widest possible audience/consumers and to be commensurably compensated for their services. Participants compete, succeed, and are rewarded based on their absolute differences on performance standards. Winner-take-all markets however encourage and contribute to the growing disparity between the wealthy and the poor by hyper-compensating its top individuals, creating a self-reinforcing culture with increasingly higher and more difficult to obtain benchmarks with only minimal if any increases in value. Executive compensation packages and the outrageous salaries of elite sporting players, models, authors, actors, actresses, directors, lawyers and even academics follow the same pattern. The incentives to participate in these markets and the rewards of success are extremely attractive and psychologically motivating.

The reward structures of winner-take-all markets encourage competition. Such competition is important in attracting and retaining the best, brightest and most productive workers. The opportunity costs of this competition however are wasteful and unproductive patterns of consumption and investment which have serious social implications. According to Frank and Cook, winner-take-all markets attract too many individuals who over-estimate their abilities, competencies and chances of occupying top spots. They thus forego opportunities to make contributions and lead successful and productive careers in other fields/disciplines. The over-subscription of applications to business, medical, law and engineering schools and the shortage of teachers, nurses, agriculturalists and workers in the construction and hospitality industries are important examples. The long lists of students seeking entry to or consideration by elite primary and secondary schools, gatekeepers of cultural and social capital, are another. In all hierarchies, there is limited room in the upper echelons, and failure is more common and more likely than success. Failure in such competitive arenas often fosters feelings of inadequacy, frustration, regret and anger.

At every stage in a winner-take-all hyper-competitive ecosystem participants are subjected to increasingly challenging selection/elimination contests. The successful survivors of these successive sieving processes move on to the finer meshes, and potentially greater rewards. This situation of increasingly demanding selection tasks and substantial difference in rewards for small differences in performance creates conditions for sustaining an escalating arms race. Competitors must make ever increasing investments of time, energy and resources in order to achieve even marginal improvements in performance, most will not achieve the highest levels of success and will have lost valuable opportunities and resources that could have been utilized more productively elsewhere. The cultish and expensive phenomenon of extra-lessons is an illustrative example. Such investments are ultimately unsustainable and wasteful. However, in a system that rewards proximal relative performance, these marginal differences are significant and the unsustainability overlooked or ignored. Those who are able to invest in this way are usually those who already have advantages in other areas, namely economic, social and cultural capital. Such arms races in social spheres are exclusionary and re-inscribe, re-produce and further widen and deepen the pervasive inequalities between those with and those without. Other participants seek out alternative strategies to give them competitive advantages and keep them from falling even further behind.

Cheating, in one form or another, occurs in all markets, but is endemic in winner-take-all markets where the potential payoff for not being caught more than mitigates against the risk. Athletes seek out novel means to increase their competitive edge without being caught, often at some risk to their personal health. In the case of CXC, cheating is also endemic from the perennial problem of the leakage of examination papers/questions, the compromised integrity of the School Based Assessments, Internal Assessments and oral examinations to the attempted use of other student strategies such as copying or crib sheets. Small differences in performance however can mean the difference between a scholarship, studying regionally or internationally and completely different sets of opportunities.

The practice of local government assisted secondary schools selecting “the twenty percent” that they are legally entitled to under the Concordat is another form of cheating in the winner-take-all market for secondary education. Annually, advocates make the pilgrimage to these quasi-religious, quasi-educational institutions to perform the ritual of offering the child’s name and number, hoping to give them even some small advantage in the exam that would measure their value and secure their future. Principals and boards offer sometimes complicated justifications for choosing the 20 or so students (out of lists exceeding 300!) based on the principle of “maintaining the individual (read religious) characters” of the school. Some choices are perhaps easier than others, some candidates luckier.

This practice is outdated, unjust, wasteful, unethical and discriminatory. This particular aspect of our winner-take-all educational economy does more real harm to our students, our educational system and our society than any perceived potential good. It unfairly denies those with legitimate claims to secondary school places in the schools that they have chosen and qualified for while simultaneously privileging a select subset of the national community for receiving a critical social good in disproportionate relation to their own performance. Like the leaked CAPE papers offered for sale, this practice subverts and undermines the confidence in the integrity of the examination process, sustains and reinforces educational and social inequalities and implicates adults in facilitating the unfair practice. For those who don’t know the rules of this perennial game; those who have no advocates who speak on their behalf in order to access these cultures of power, privilege and prestige; who are conditioned to implicitly trust that the system is completely ‘meritocratic’, just enough ‘earn’ their places on merit alone, to be grateful enough never to ask embarrassing questions, to speak for those for whom no one speaks.

Another consequence of winner-take-all markets in education is the concentration of talent in a few elite institutions. As I have journeyed across Trinidad over the last eighteen months or so, visiting, observing and evaluating secondary teachers (and their students, administrators and school cultures) I have come to appreciate that the quality of teachers and teaching is relatively consistent across the island (though student performance is another matter). In all schools I have found ‘good’ teachers and ‘not quite so good’ teachers. What is striking though is that in all cases the government assisted schools that I have visited have classes that are too large or overcrowded to easily and meaningfully support the type of teaching and learning experiences being advocated by professional and teacher educators and supported by the overwhelming research in the Learning Sciences. In every government assisted school I have visited the learning environment is designed to support teacher dominated transmission and modeling as the primary day-to-day instructional strategy. Many of the government schools on the other hand are not the criminal breeding grounds that they are often made out to be in the media. Rather, many students and teachers work extremely hard under better (classroom and administrative) conditions for learning and have achieved the highest degrees of success. Graduates of these secondary schools sometimes have had richer more diverse educational experiences than their privileged peers. I often wonder what would happen if our educational talent was more evenly and fairly distributed across schools?

The practice of chronological age grouping combined with increasingly challenging and consequential competitions for high status social goods in a winner-take-all economy also wastes talent by narrowing and reducing opportunities for those who develop at different rates through rewarding precocity and punitively punishing children with slower maturation cycles. As Alan Gregg argues, “…once you have most of your students the same age, the academic rewards…go to those who are uncommonly bright for their age…in effect, you have unwittingly belittled man’s cardinal educational capital – time to mature.” The research literature is clear that for students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds, the challenges associated with being a late bloomer become almost insurmountable. Furthermore, early ability is not always a good nor necessarily the best indicator of future accomplishment and success. Our practices by which we choose winners in the educational marketplace and reward precocity mean that annually for several decades we have been wasting the talent and potentials of an untold number of students, placing them at a severe social disadvantage and consigning them to futures filled with unnecessary anxiety, insecurity and uncertainty, those for whom being ‘bright’ enough simply isn’t good enough. The National Open School initiative is a step in the right direction as are any attempts to loosen chronology’s collar in schools by integrating the grouping of students by age and subject matter with a grouping by interest and proficiency within the formal curriculum. Unfortunately I know of no such attempts being made in Trinidad or Tobago at present.

Contests have always been a means of demonstrating prowess and proficiency. They have also always been political too in the sense that to the winners went a disproportionate share of valued social goods including power, prestige and influence. At present the rewards are disproportionately concentrated in so few heads and hands as to be obscene. Never has the incentive to circumvent the traditional routes of disciplined hard work, ethical investment and continuous moderate gains through cheating been greater. In the ancient world, sporting contests allowed warriors/soldiers to simulate and demonstrate skills that would be valuable in defending their community. Cheating could place a community at risk for conquest. The same applies to educational arenas, except that the risk of conquest comes from within the society itself in addition to the reduced ability to successfully manage external threats. As educational psychologist Jerome Bruner reminds us “when any group is robbed of its legitimate aspiration, it will aspire desperately and by means that outrage the broader society, though they are efforts to sustain or regain dignity.” Winner-take-all markets, hyper-competition and cheating all work in different ways to deny many their fullest dignity. Educational discourse in Trinidad and Tobago often seems to vacillate between periods of crisis, moral panic and indifference, much of what passes for analysis is shallow, vacuous, self-serving and uncritical, some of it downright dangerous. As Princeton philosopher Kwame Appiah writes “What makes oppression possible is that there are people who profit as well as people who suffer. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, as George Bernard Shaw observed shrewdly, is a policy that will, at least guarantee you the vigorous support of Paul.” In Trinidad and Tobago, many Paul’s are powerful advocates for their own self-interest over and above the interests of the society. It is extremely difficult and psychologically painful to acknowledge one’s privileged position(s) from which one’s benefits derive and then to have it called into question, to acknowledge one’s complicity in the oppression and sufferings of others. It is almost impossible to work to transform a system of oppression from which one or one’s close associates derive important benefits to a more pantisocratic system in which power and the benefits that derive are shared more equally. Nevertheless, it is a task in which we cannot afford to fail. If we are to tackle the problems and tasks placed before us as participants in history’s future unfolding rather than as mere spectators or tourists (or worse), we must choose to engage with questions such as those posed by Lloyd Best’s Moses’ conundrum, where he asks, “How does a nation revise the perspectives of the desert so as to form fertile empirical judgments of what is required by the Promised Land?” It is a task that will raise many uncomfortable, unsettling, disturbing and perhaps dangerous questions. But this is a conversation for all of us. The dialogue has been opened…

Hypocrisy and Culpability: Considering Karen’s Conflict

Part 1
The etymology of the word “hypocrite” is instructive. Its Greek origins point to an actor on a stage, a pretender who interprets the playwright’s script and director’s instructions in order to evoke a convincing performance. Another reading, one more closely aligned with our modern understanding of the word as a contradiction or lack of correlation between professed belief and enacted behavior, derives from the conjunction of the prefix hypo, meaning under, and the verb krinein, meaning to sift, separate, judge or decide. Thus, a hypocrite is one in which there exists some deficiency (not necessarily intellectual or moral) or compromise of the integrity in one’s ability to sift, decide, or weigh objectively and impartially, especially in critical matters. It is this latter sense in which the circumstances of duty and opportunity afforded Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira by virtue of her office, bring into sharp relief a contrast, if not an alarming discontinuity, between her professional and personal identities and the associated loci of her concomitant responsibilities. Just as the two aspects of hypocrisy are difficult to tease apart from one another in discourse and practice, so too is it difficult to disentangle any of one’s substantive identities from any other, except perhaps as a consequence of some underlying psychopathology or singularity of narcissistic self-deception. These might appropriately be termed hubris by some and do not magically absolve one of culpability and responsibility for one’s actions.

One of the central philosophical issues that the current situation raises, and one which has not yet been adequately addressed in the discussion around conflict of interest is the nature of the self and the ability to partition identity and thus action and responsibility. The model of the self that seems to be dominating the discussion thus far is one in which an individual’s identity is seen as being not more than the sum of his/her independent parts/roles. In this framing, Karen the Minister of Finance is independent and acts independently and mutually exclusively of any interests held by Karen the shareholder and thus partial owner of CL, Karen the lawyer, Karen the widow and heiress, Karen the daughter, Karen the PNM representative and Karen the woman. Only within such a framing is it possible for Karen the Minister of Finance to be able to claim no hypocrisy in her participation in the decision making process regarding CL.

Unfortunately for all of these Karens, our selves, the different roles we play that go into making up our (seemingly) coherent identity are neither independent nor mutually exclusive, they are not discrete or separable, indeed, they are networked and nested. That is to say that all of our roles and relationships are implicated relationally in our identity, we do not cease to be or have interest in one of our other selves when we are performing actions within the discursive boundaries that define another self nor is it only Karen the Minister of Finance who may suffer the consequences of having charges brought against her. While at times we may often foreground or privilege one role over others, this is only temporary, and it does not mean that any other roles and identities that we have in the background do not exert effects on the foreground, only that the likelihood that we will be aware, conscious of these effects, is reduced. Indeed, we are not aware of the causes or consequences of the majority of our embodied neurological and physiological activities that produce behavior, only that tiny fraction that bubbles up to the surface of our conscious awareness and only that to which we deliberately orient our self, or are called to attend to. Even then our consciousness is limited by the extent to which we are able to locate or create suitable concepts upon which to frame and articulate our experience of our consciousness, much of which is shaped by our prior personal experiences, collective knowledge and personal values, viz. our conscience. If the idea of individual and independent selves appear separate in Law and legal theory at present, it is only because the Law and public policy have not yet caught up and dealt with the full implications of the findings and advances in the theory, Science, and Philosophy of mind, self, action and identity. Indeed, one of the central findings of this research is that we are always already responsible for more than we intended and that all of our actions have unanticipated and unintended consequences. Such research suggests that we need to demonstrate a greater level of care, caution, compassion and personal and collective responsibility (ethics) in all of our actions that greatly surpass the minima that are codified in laws and public policy at present. Those who seek to lead and govern must perhaps exceed even this.

Hypocrisy and Culpability: Considering Karen’s Conflict

Part 2
Hypocrisy, in general, and under most circumstances, is not illegal, and is oftentimes tolerated with amusement and forgiven. Celebrities, executives, judges, pastors, academics, and all custodians of public trust, confidence, office, and purse, however, now more than ever, are the subject of intense, ongoing, and damning scrutiny both for the degree of fit between what they say and do and their fitness, not merely finesse, for the tasks entrusted to them. Consider the glocal financial meltdown, some of the blame for which is being placed on David Li’s Gaussian copula function, a correlational model, which was widely adopted on Wall Street. As Felix Salmon notes in the February Wired magazine cover story, “the real danger was created not because any given trader adopted it but because every trader did. In financial markets, everybody doing the same thing is the classic recipe for a bubble and inevitable bust.” Another part of the problem Salmon notes is that “the quants, who should have been more aware of the copula's weaknesses, weren't the ones making the big asset-allocation decisions. Their managers, who made the actual calls, lacked the math skills to understand what the models were doing or how they worked. They could, however, understand something as simple as a single correlation number.” Finally, early and serious warnings were ignored, “partly because the managers empowered to apply the brakes didn't understand the arguments between various arms of the quant universe. Besides, they were making too much money to stop.” All of this was coupled with a lack of sufficient and appropriate financial oversight, regulation and timely accountability by policy makers in Washington.

What is clear from the above is that managers and decision makers, especially in the area of Finance need much more sophisticated mathematical understandings than many may currently possess. They need to improve their fitness. Additionally, us “quants” who do “get this math” need to be much more vocal and forceful in having our voices and concerns heard and listened to by the public and those who make decisions on the public’s behalf. Indeed, we need to find suitable “quants” from among the ranks to occupy those positions of power and responsibility. This will probably require a little more finesse and clarity of communication than most mathematicians are used to or comfortable with. Finally, we need to find fecund financial stewards who demonstrate fitness, finesse as well as an unwavering commitment to fairness – individuals with meticulous, not mercurial, moral mettle. Greed is a strong attractor. It must not be given license with indifference to social injustice which corrupts the body politic.

Unfortunately for Karen she seems to be demonstrating a decided lack of fitness where financial matters are concerned. In addition, her finesse is slowly sublimating, diffusing what credibility and force of moral, legal or political suasion she has left. I think I understand fully her defensive strategy, a dictum that good lawyers always advise their clients to follow: never admit guilt or liability as the burden of proof always rests with the prosecution. Her pre-emptive maneuvers however are interesting since she has not (yet) been formally charged with any crime, though she is working hard to influence and change the tenor of the conversation in the unforgiving court of public opinion at present.

The Lenten period in which this political drama unfolded is one of wandering, reflection, repentance and renewed commitment to life-giving principles from the source from which Life issues. In the Christian tradition this manifests itself in the repeated and prolonged examination of conscience, given voice via the mea culpa – “through my own fault” and ultimately manifested in a change in personal behavior and character. The culpa here refers to an act of commission or omission and the Minister appears to be doubly culpable. I continue to pray that Karen and her Cabinet colleagues retreat and receive the blessing of one pair of big C’s that lie at the heart of the Christian journey towards and during Easter – a Contrite Conscience – and that they remember that of the two thieves crucified with Jesus at Golgotha, only one was promised paradise…

Caring for Our selves

“Advanced industrial society is sick-making because it disables people from coping with their environment and, when they break down, substitutes a "clinical," or therapeutic, prosthesis for the broken relationships.” Ivan Illich - Medical Nemesis.

I always knew I wanted to be a teacher. Unlike my friends who tell me of their earliest teaching experiences, which involved lining up their dolls or siblings and lecturing them before scolding and beating them with rulers, I don’t recall ever playing school. I remember being responsible for my first set of students when I was 12 years old and had returned to my primary school to assist my former Standard 5 teacher, Mr. Ousman Ali, with his Saturday classes. The painting he did for me—a simple scene based on ones he had drawn many times in coloured chalk in class to stimulate our creative writing—still hangs in my parents’ home today. Even then people told me I was crazy to want to become a teacher: “It eh ha no future in dat.” “Yuh lacking ambition or what?” “Dah is all yuh want to be?” “Yuh know how hard dem chirren head does be?” “Like yuh like holidays?”

By the time I had finished secondary school, I had had numerous opportunities to try out didactic experiments on my peers. These experiences reinforced my desire to enter “the noblest profession.” Once again, this seemed like insanity to those around me: “Boy, why you doh become a doctor?” “How you going to provide for a wife an family an ting?” “If yuh think dem chirren head hard, wait till yuh meet dey parents.” “Yuh have too much talent to remain in teaching.” I am sure that I disappointed many people by following through on my desire to become a teacher.

I began teaching in May 1999. I was interviewed in October that year and received my first teacher’s salary in March the following year. By the second term of 2001, I was diagnosed with and was being treated for depression. Few of my friends or colleagues knew about it. I was prescribed a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), which had the effect of flattening out my emotional landscape. Thus, while I no longer had feelings of anxiety, despair, or hopelessness I also had difficulty experiencing feelings of pleasure and desire. During the treatment period, I decided that I did not want to exist in that state longer than I had to and began to analyse some of the potential causes of my depression. Next, I took steps to improve those relationships I felt would help me to be healthy in the long term—I exercised more frequently, and put aside more time for rest and socialization with friends. I also tried to limit and remove myself from those stressful occasions, persons, and situations that had precipitated the onset.

Depression is not something that I have gotten over; but I have gotten better at recognising the early warning signs in myself, such as fatigue, short temperedness, and insomnia, and to take evasive action early. In the period just before I left teaching, for example, I spent a lot more time outdoors taking nature photographs and re-discovering my artistic side. My experiences as a neophyte teacher have led me to the brink of depression and rage because of the violence and humiliation that one sometimes finds in school. But it has been Art and Love that have taught me how to re-connect and re-orient my relationships; to find my way back. Not everyone finds a way back.

Teacher burnout and attrition are problems the world over. While they are related to individual characteristics, they are also related to the institutionalised isolation, frustration, and anger that accompany “the loneliest profession,” and which are consequences of our increasingly anachronistic industrial and mechanical constructions and conceptions of schooling. As a teacher, one can always do/give more. Indeed, some teachers feel intense guilt when asked to give more but know they are unable. Machines can be pushed beyond their limit and can be replaced if they break. We can no longer continue to conceive of any human being in this instrumental manner. One has a responsibility to oneself to sometimes do less, do differently, but always work to do better. As teachers, we have a responsibility to care for ourselves and to teach our charges, by our own examples, how to care for themselves by nurturing healthy relationships. We might begin by opening up, and re-discovering, the value and vulnerability of our relationships with our (he)Arts.

Welcome

Welcome to my first blog where I intend to make accessible some of my thoughts and writings that have appeared in the Trinidad Express on Education and Culture, especially in Trinidad & Tobago and the Caribbean. I probably won't do these in chronological order. In addition readers and subscribers can look forward to reading some of those that have NOT appeared for one reason or another or are parts of works in progress for publication.
I invite thoughful critical responses and constructive critique as well as comments, suggestions and ideas.
In time I hope to be able to comment in a more timely fashion on what's happening in education both in TT and in the wider world.
Enjoy