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WAEC's
stunning report and ULFA's strike warrants urgent
attention
Tuesday,
October 03, 2006
By Tewroh-Wehtoe Sungbeh
When I
graduated from the former William R. Tolbert Jr., High
School (D-Twe) in New Kru Town in 1977, under the
disciplinarian principal Timothy Nyae, our school
never made any negative headlines for sub par
academics but was derided for its location, and was constantly referred to as the “Kru
school” by some because it was built in an impoverished part of town.
Our graduating class including perennial
powerhouse Tubman High under that school’s
disciplinarian principal Arthur Manly, and the other
public schools to my knowledge passed the West African
Examination Council’s (WAEC) annual national
examinations overwhelmingly and graduated most of its
students with flying colors.
The government schools hung in there
academically with the Catholic schools and other
private and religious schools in the nation’s
capital. Public and private schools in the various
counties also hung in there and made our country proud
in the education arena during our time.
Like most high schools, Tolbert High had its
share of science buffs, aspiring writers and
journalists, math whiz kids who could work any
algebraic equation, wannabe orators, French-speaking
enthusiasts; not the (“Pierre et Saydou”) type we
know, aspiring politicians, ‘troublemakers,’
bench-warmers, and the attention-seeking class clowns
who made us all laugh each day with their antics.
That was then. Now let’s fast forward to
2006, twenty-nine years after I, or we graduated high
school, 13 years before the civil war, and 3 years
after the war ended when the anticipated peace
agreement was finally signed between the warring
factions for an interim government, which was followed
later by an elected government.
The civil war was a blow to the Liberian nation
and damaged the foundation of its educational system.
Some one said to me during a recent gathering
that the next generation of Liberians would be the
“illiterate generation,” because of the
destruction of the young minds some saw firsthand, or
the ones we all saw from afar in documentaries and
newsreels when kids who should have been in school
learning how to add and subtract numbers were busied
counting bullets to kill the innocent.
The war ruined those kids and drained the
little support network around them making it extremely
difficult for them to be the students we expect them
to be to
compete academically and complete their
studies.
And if they do graduate from the various
academic levels including high school and college,
some cannot even identify a verb when they see one,
construct a sentence that make sense or calculate a
simple addition or subtraction.
While the students are having difficulty
getting to and from school and finding meals to keep
them going daily, their teachers are no different as
some lived on bribes from students to survive because
of the low salaries they are being paid or are not
getting at all.
The recent report from the West African
Examination Council (WAEC), detailing the inability of
most of the students to pass the annual national
examinations is an example of the damage caused by the
civil war, and what to expect if things are not done
quickly to control the bleeding in the nation’s
educational system.
According to reports from the examination
council, out of the 14,978 twelve graders that sat for
the examination, 3,439 male students failed while
2,075 female students also failed, making it a total
of 5,514 total students who did not make it out of 12th
grade.
Some of the schools whose students failed are
not your fly by night high schools that popped up from
nowhere to become high schools overnight, but one like
the admired and respected Our Lady of Fatima High
School in Harper, Maryland County is also a victim of the
civil war, and experienced firsthand what war can do to
the nation, its people and some
of the good schools in the country.
What is so interesting is that individual
students from Fatima High School did not only fail, but the
entire class failed, as is the case with the entire
class - 93 students from the 12th
grade class of Wells Hairston High and other schools
also failed.
Meanwhile, instructors and professors at the
University of Liberia (LU) are boycotting classes
“unless their monthly salaries of ($36.68 and $96.06
for professors and staffs) were increased by
government,” it has been reported.
The group representing the interests of the
university workers, the University of Liberia Faculty
Association (ULFA) claimed, “prior to the outbreak
of the civil war in 1990, professors and other staffs
were paid between US$550 and US$1,100.00, and vowed to
stay away from the classroom until their demands are
met by the government and the university.
What’s fueling the rage at the University of
Liberia is the idea of a person working and not being
paid for what they are worth. The guys and ladies at
the university and other institutions of learning in
Liberia deserves better treatment than what they are
getting from the Liberian government.
Because no one, not a single person on earth
wants to work and not paid adequately for what they
do. And the faculty members and other workers at the
university are no exception.
This particular issue about salaries didn’t
just show up on the national radar just the other day
when faculty members and other workers took matters
into their own hands by striking and disregarding the
laws of the republic.
The matter has been brewing quietly in Liberia
but was ignored at the convenience of those at the
top, since it wasn’t affecting them personally.
And when the nation’s leaders – from
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to the Minister of
Education Joseph Korto and the President of the
University of Liberia, Al Hassan Conteh did not
address the matter urgently like they should have done
in the first place, the workers went on strike and did
exactly what some of us would have done had we
encountered unfair labor practice at our own
places of employment.
I am quite sure the labor dispute was brewing
in the country when the Minister of Education Joseph
Korto left Liberia in late September to attend the
Union of Liberian Association’s general assembly
conference in Philadelphia, where he served as the
keynote speaker.
With a convention of this kind with such a
diverse audience of Liberians from all ethnic,
religious and political persuasions together at one
time and under one roof, I expected Mr. Korto to
address the educational crisis in the country, and
tell his listening audience what his administration is
doing to improve grades, teacher’s salaries, the
quality of teachers and the educational system in
Liberia.
But he did not.
I also expected the Minister of Education to
discuss the lingering salary dispute at the University of Liberia
and other institutions in the country, since low pay
often breeds corruption and sub-standard teachers and
hustlers who have no interest in graduating capable
and quality students but are interested in stealing to
enhance their own daily survival.
According to the delegates I contacted after
the convention, I am told Mr. Korto spoke of his days
as President of the Union of Liberian Associations in
the Americas (ULAA), the issue of absentee ballots for
Liberians in the next elections, ULAA’s failure and
other issues not related to the education crisis in
Liberia.
Since Mr. Korto once served as president of
this organization, can he be blamed for some of
ULAA’s problems?
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