Pasi Sahlberg is a great Finnish educator whose book “Finnish Lessons” promoted the predictable vision of a nation that succeeded without high-stakes testing, without standardized testing as we know it . He scribed that highly educated teachers who had wide latitude and self-sufficiency in their classrooms and who liaised with their colleagues to do what was best for their students has proven to be fruitful. He wrote that a national school system that values the arts, physical activity, and play are preparing a platform for a better society. The OECD called it the best school system in the world!
The Trinidad & Tobago education system is in need of reform. The Curriculum committee should seek fellowship with local institutions of higher learning and to engage international avenues as a pathway to guide the implementation of the reform needed to restructure the system. What are the available options for students whose education efforts have failed them, whose individual efforts have not been researched for remediation? Strike at the core values of physical education within the artery of the national school curriculum.
Destroy the band aid, practice preventive medicine. Institute prevention surveillance, and management into the system. Build the nation from the ground up. Strike at the core values of physical education in the schools. Start from kindergarten and move upward. Stop physical information and consume physical education in its proper perspectives. Rewrite the colonial prescription; engage a sustainable development platform as an effervescent energy.
Physical information as is required to pass the CXC is not good enough. Physical education which creates an interactive coherent understanding of the dynamics behind health and wellness issues and problems to include action competence with positive enhancing consequences.
The days for lackluster calisthenics followed by dodge ball are over. This behavior establishes the depth of training received by the Physical education teacher with a need for creativity. The institution of interdisciplinary approaches to physical education must be seriously considered because of their symbiosis relationship.
UWI’s Health & Wellness Researchers claimed that 20 percent of our youth are obese and 30 percent are overweight. This alert warning prognostication laments our school educational system as preparing the market for “Long John Silver’s” Treasure Island amputees by the time teenagers become adults.
Diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol filled children are crowding our hospitals. Absenteeism is invading our schools. The corporate workplace is combating unhealthy dialogue with unions, the Ministry of education is experiencing repeated forms of sick leave employees daily, the Ministry of Health recorded that the 1 out of every 8 adults is suffering from diabetes. Legs are being cut off because of this.
Adults are walking, running, jogging, exercising more now than say 10 years ago when they attended school. Our Physical education teachers must become more vocal, more proactive, more involved. They must stop riding the back of the bus. Let their voices be heard. Remove the Physical Education Stigma! Confiscate the Mental Narrative!
Today's Physical Education programs should among other developmental stimuli require its Practitioners to monitor students’ heart rate, teach them about nutrition and wellness, and the benefits of exercise. Studies indicate that children should perform at least 15minutes of moderate to vigorous play activity daily.
The nation’s Schools are pressured to improve student test scores. The Curriculum specialist in the Ministry of Education does not plan for a healthy body to produce a healthy mind. Hence, they question the core value of physical education in the curriculum as a contributor to a healthy national economy.
The belief that time spent on Physical education compromises academic performance is false. Current research at Oregon state university suggests that physical activities help to promote better learning and wellness ultimately produces improved concentration.
Steward Trost of the Department Nutrition and Exercise Science at Oregon State University claims that “physical activity can help a child in the formative years / short term can also help students’ behavioral, cognitive, and physical mobility in later life.” Check the visual performance laboratories of the Savannahs and Parks in T&T between 4 pm – 8 pm daily. What do you see and conclude? You see what certain elements of society did not do as children they are trying to do as adults. They enjoy what they are doing. There is camaraderie. Dedication, there are spurts of a competitive spirits emerging from the trenches of their souls. There was stop and go. There was “I can’t do it, Yes you can” dialogue going on within the bosoms of friendship and care.
There were the behavioral classes in the visible human experience. Their personal space is engaging. They created their own performing community which is looking after each other. They showcase themselves. This transpires at a greater cost and much sacrificial labor. Participants are now walking and jogging for a longer life span. Yet the colonial mentality continues to father our thoughts. Socio-economics and social stratification continues to influence our educational stratosphere. The pollutant effects must be addressed to give us 21st century emancipation and readiness. It is time to examine and hold educational reform as the protagonist spurring the movement forward for repair.
There were the behavioral classes in the visible human experience. Their personal space is engaging. They created their own performing community which is looking after each other. They showcase themselves. This transpires at a greater cost and much sacrificial labor. Participants are now walking and jogging for a longer life span. Yet the colonial mentality continues to father our thoughts. Socio-economics and social stratification continues to influence our educational stratosphere. The pollutant effects must be addressed to give us 21st century emancipation and readiness. It is time to examine and hold educational reform as the protagonist spurring the movement forward for repair.
In the T&T School System: Testing and no conversations about visual schools are short circuiting the Education process. These wounds are embracing a conscience of guilt within our people. It is dividing our people into color codes of mass destruction. Think of Sports as the protagonist to life beyond standardized testing. Take an egotistical look into your mirror of self. This platform should galvanize a restorative and courageous corrective to the national tête-à-tête about education reform.
Dr. Cliff Bertrand
Former NYC Board of Education School Administrator
