Showing posts with label budget. Show all posts
Showing posts with label budget. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Simple math for value in leading for literacy and numeracy Speech to UNESCO National Commission launch

Remarks at Leading for Literacy and Numeracy phase 2 launch by Dr Kris Rampersad   
 Chair of the Trinidad and Tobago National Commission for UNESCO,
Trinidad and Tobago Representative on UNESCO Executive Board


A recent IDB report that notes the sad fact ‘that too many Caribbean students finish primary school without acquiring levels of literacy and numeracy sufficient to equip them to succeed in secondary school or in an employment market that is increasingly complex and competitive.”
We who are inside the system have known that for a long time and that no country—not even one rich in natural resources, as that report notes —can flourish without a population so educated.
That report also notes UNESCO’s definition of literacy as the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute, and use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. UNESCO recognises that literacy is both a right in itself and an instrument for achieving other rights and that it is impossible to separate the right to literacy from the right to education.
That IDB report on literacy and numeracy in the Caribbean takes its definition of numeracy from the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers: that to be numerate is to use mathematics effectively to meet the demands of life at home, in paid work, and for participation in community and civic life. Numeracy is to mathematics as literacy is to language. It states:
From these definitions emerge a picture of literacy and numeracy as the fundamentals of education and a means for social and human development. Such definitions are contextual and influenced by the practical necessities of life. In the area of literacy, for example, terms such as functional literacy, cultural literacy, quantitative literacy, and computer literacy, among others, have emerged in recent years, a direct result of attempts to articulate the higher demands of literacy imposed by contemporary society. Similarly, what sufficed for numeracy 20 years ago cannot be adequate today. The common calculator now includes keys for functions that were previously only understood by scientists and engineers. (IDB Regional Policy Dialogue on  Education: Literacy and Numeracy in  the Caribbean  Report )
When the Trinidad and Tobago National Commission of UNESCO met to consider this project, following the mandate of the Commission’s President, the Minister of Education,  Dr Tim Gopeesingh, in our general discussions there were numerous examples from commissioners about the various challenges they faced in learning mathematics – ‘math anxiety’ among them, which could itself fill a story book.
I had my story, too, about learning to read and learning mathematics.
As a child I read everything I lay my eyes on. Everything, no exaggeration. Reading materials were limited in the country districts, you know. My reading materials came from signboards passing by on a drive, to labels on cans, and of course books whether they were mine or of others, whether they were text book, story books, newspapers. One of my earliest memories as a preteen is jumping up and down in frustration for want of reading matter as I had read everything on the bookshelf which largely contained text books from agriscience, science to social studies etc of my elder siblings.  The nearest library was miles away in the nearest town and inaccessible until I started high school. 
My story of mathematics is a different one. I could calculate almost any sum or measurements in my head – my father who was a part time market vendor loved taking me to the market because I calculated costs of his whole sale and retail goods and the special discounts he wanted to offer to special customers instantly in my head. Calculations of weights and measurements, distances, and the like in my head came easily.
And yet I struggled with text book maths and for exams it took extra effort to make the grades.
I - what we call crammed - for my O-Level mathematics exam with an intense focus in the few weeks before the exam. I gritted my teeth on the deadline crunch and made out a lesson plan of the different modules and mapped out a path to learning each and the formulas associated with them. That meant, actually having to write out in words, and create a story around each formula and their connected components - for real. I turned my maths text into a story book: and that’s how those remote and alien formulas jumped to life, and made sense to me so I would remember them in an exam room.
Mathematical formulas were not the English language, like my story books, so I needed to dedicate special time with lots of coffee at exam crunch to interpret formulas into the language that I knew. I came to that understanding that I needed to understand mathematics in the context of some correlation to reading. If I hadn’t, I could have easily fallen through the cracks too, because text book teaching did not provide that approach I needed, and which perhaps can also account for many of our so called failure at maths - that students’ approaches to learning mathematics, as with learning language can vary, so teaching methods and tools must incorporate the kind of variety we are trying to include in the teaching of literacy.
The problems and challenges we have uncovered in the pilot leading for literacy programme may be very applicable and relevant and similar to what is needed for numeracy.
My story of learning is just one such story and I’m sure is like one which as educators you might have heard several times over.
As we embark on this, the second part of the National Commission for UNESCO Leading for Literacy – and now Leading for Numeracy project
I have a few things I want to lay on the table for your consideration:
1.     That this project offers an ideal opportunity to explore the possible points of intersection between the challenges we face in teaching language, the English language included – which we erroneously consider our first language, but which educators are now discovering need to be taught as a foreign language and teaching the language of mathematics, which may also be considered a foreign language: that can help bring text book learning closer home to the applied, oral traditions approach that is more natural to our people.
My analogy of the need for literacy in numeracy is just a component of that general right to literacy recognised by UNESCO which precedes the right to information: about a decade ago some of us in the civil society movement fought to have that right to information recognised as a basic human right across the Commonwealth and UN systems.
All of these rights now converge in the computerized age in which we function: HTML/Computer language is an amalgam of competencies in numeracy, literacy and everything in between and has brought startlingly home to us the need for unification of the humanities and the sciences – the former represented in literacy – the latter in numeracy: a separation that has for long been perpetuated by our school system, in the creation of subject grouping that separate those in the arts from those in the sciences and which still persist in terms of the awards and scholarship systems.
O we must consider the areas of convergence in the teaching of literacy and numeracy: as not to be treated as separate competencies, but intertwined – and in treating here both numeracy and literacy together, we have in this room the beginnings of the formula to do so.

So now I want to leave with you a little bit of homework: some numerical calculations that came to me in reviewing the distance travelled with the leading for Literacy pilot exercise still in progress: 40 principals and 80 teachers trained in literacy and numeracy; and class loads of infant 1s and 2s receiving their badges ‘I am learning to read’ and their parents engaged also in the parenting for literacy initiative.
Some of the feedback from our trained educator leaders were: Students have been making great progress with Letter Recognition and Sounds of Letters. There are a few struggling along, mostly the ones who never attended preschool. They are still adjusting to school. Learning is taking place, some who were answering in one word sentences are now describing what is happening in pictures. Oral Language has improved. Students are enjoying the singing, actions and dancing …
The teacher did a concept lesson on the letter m. The objectives of the lesson were achieved. The children were able to give the sound of the letter m with the motion and gave words that begin with that letter sound. They were also able to identify pictures and words with that letter sound as their evaluation. The children were also able to trace and write the letter. The teacher also integrated maths in the lesson using the thematic approach. As a follow up,  the teacher was advised to build a wordwall with pictures and matching words of the letter m.  Another follow up will be using m words in sentence strips for reading.
The students are visibly having fun as they learn! Their laughter and sometimes giggles must make one smile.
Even those with whom we could not have gotten through last year are showing some progress. Unfortunately their progress is a bit slower than the younger children. All however are saying the sounds, doing the actions and completing the written assignments.
The teachers also continue to add resources to develop their model classrooms.
The teachers know what they are doing and are given autonomy in their classes since they also have had to struggle with slow learners, Curriculum Rewrite training and a multitude of other challenges.
But as I always tell them, challenges make us stronger and better!

There are challenges too. Another comment from among those trained:
We have two first year classes with a total of forty-eight students (25 and 23 boys). My teachers are working overtime with the students. The class with twenty-five students seems to be so cramped and the students are restless with the humidity. My heart goes out to these two committed teachers so I visit regularly and have discussions, and offer suggestions of encouragement. In both classes there are five year old students whose developmental levels are not ready for primary school. There are many individual differences within the classes and there are even cases where parents have already given up on their sons. Grandparents are forced to take the role of the biological parents and for various reasons. Some of them are unable to cope with these energetic grandsons. I have, however, taken the names of such parents and have been chatting with them on the phone appealing with them to assist their sons in the observed areas of weakness e.g., hand exercises to develop his motor skills, forming his letters with the hook, proper way to hold a pencil, correct way to hold his exercise book, revising the letter sounds etc. The teachers have even observed bullies within their classes so I have contacted those parents via phone and have asked them to visit for further discussions. Despite the various challenges, my teachers continue to be passionate, working extremely hard, and I am walking the journey with them for we want this experiment to be successful. The school disruptions are regular but we are trying to cope and at the same time encouraging our parents to work with us. With our sale of "milkies and freezies" for the month we have purchased a pack of laminating envelopes to laminate and preserve our letters and pictures, pretty expensive though but we are hoping to reap the benefits of our sacrifice in the future. God bless, hang in their colleagues and we all will be proud of our efforts!
The spin-off benefits are yet to come when these infant ones and twos impact on their parents and peers and siblings and communities.
Another comment:
The year-1 pupils showed the ability to correct their peers if any letter was sounded incorrectly. The Year 1 students were very eager to offer sentences when called upon.
That’s what we at the Trinidad and Tobago National Commission for UNESCO did with around half a million dollars, one quarter from UNESCO and the rest from the Ministry of Education and various sponsors: 40 principals, 80 teachers, loads and loads of infant ones and two and their parents learning to become leaders and readers.
For this, Leading for Literacy and Numeracy for Secondary Schools, the second component of the programme, our budget is just over one million dollars (TT). Your home work is to calculate what may be achieved with this million more; and then further on, what we could achieve with 34 million, or 36 million, for literacy and numeracy; and then with the additional permutations of all these infant one and twos passing on their learnings and their excitement and enthusiasm for reading to siblings, parents and peers in the communities, for not just 2250 boys but several communities and families and the permutations and spin off benefits ofthat.
That’s the multiplication we need to do: from an investment of just about half a million that’s what we got, and that is only in the preliminary stages, and within just about one year – using existing infrastructure, which, I note from your reports, are plagued with numerous problems and challenges of their own. On which note, might I add that it continues to puzzle me – and perhaps those from Chaguanas can help me understand the logic and calculations in this: when does a court house become more important than a library? To my mind, it seems if we had more libraries, we will need less court houses, not so? Isn’t that the simple arithmetic?
As curriculum officers, principals and teachers being taught to lead for literacy, take these learnings and take charge of your communities. That was the challenge I threw out to the first guinea pigs of our project when we launched around this time last year, August 2013. And now I challenge you to, too, take charge! Lead. Return us to the time when the school was the centre of the community and principals and teachers were indeed respected heads and leaders of our society.
With that, I leave you to your homework. Happy learnings, and I look forward to return at the end of this week to witness the results of this exercise then, and beyond,

I thank you.

August 18, 2014
Port of Spain, Trinidad



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Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Belizean bulldozer mentality pervades region

Belize bulldozer mentality pervades region
Countries dozing off on heritage education and bio-cultural sustainable development planning

At Xunantunich preclassical complex in Belize. (c) Kris rampersd
Who in the region can say it wouldn’t happen to us? The bulldozing of the 3200-plus year-old-Mayan Noh Mul temple in Orange Walk Belize is only symptomatic of level of unchecked danger and threats to significant heritage elements of the region and the degree of short sightedness in our approach to sustainable development. 
The bulldozer mentality is symptomatic of pervading misperceptions that sustainability, bio-cultural heritage conservation and development are polar opposites. This promotes confrontational approaches at the expense of exploration of very real modes by which the two can successfully and peacefully co-exist to the benefit of populations. Countries of the region needs to reexamine its overall approaches to sustainable development planning, budgeting and education and consciousness raising, not just about heritage but about the way we view sector development and their relation with each other.  Our budget and economic, social and environmental planning directorate and bureaucracies should take note.
With a population about the size of Tobago’s, Belize, a former British colony might be said to be perhaps one of the least pressured countries of the region in terms of the intensity of competition for land space for development. Tobago can itself fit into Belize about 75 times; Jamaica, the largest of the English-speaking Caribbean islands, can fit twice, and Trinidad four times.
Last week’s bulldozing by a construction company of what was visibly a temple and part of a complex to turn the rubble into – of all things – gravel for a road (from the comments on the internet I am not the only aghast at the sheer idiocy of this) is testimony to some of the challenges for heritage preservation facing the region.
Proper land use planning with concurrent resourcing, execution and implementation may be one element of a solution, but without a focussed awareness building and formal and informal education that inject heritage consciousness from the cradle through adulthood, it is a tragedy that is certain to be repeated.
For instance, the Mayas are still described and treated in the past tense in much of our history and standard educational material – part of historic misrepresentations of all the civilisations that comprise our region - although very vibrant Mayan communities live across South/Central America and not unlike  with other regional ethnic groups, function in active regional diasporas across the globe.
They were also in significant numbers in our heritage training sessions in Belize last year, eating, breathing, talking, exchanging ideas, reciting, playing music, dancing, living, as indeed it was a astounding to discover the numbers of Mayan building complexes that existed in this small land space, most of them heavily silted over through the millennia, overgrown with full fledged trees and overrun with wildlife.
A significant element of the tragedy of the bulldozing at the Noh Mul complex  is that it was visible and known to exist, not like Altun Ha where allegedly it wasn't and it when the blasting revealed the complex it was stopped. This is part of one of the documented temple complex in the Orange Walk district where there is a significant population of Mayan descent. It is not one of the hundreds of other architectural complexes across Belize and South/Central America that have been overgrown, covered over by silt and which now support huge forest and other ecosystems and so indistinguishable from the natural landscape. That in itself might provide an excuse to a bulldozer purportedly innocently quarrying what is believed to be a hill, but only in the absence of proper environmental assessment, which is a mandatory requirement for any development project.
The site of the hundreds of temple complexes across Belize which nature has reclaimed and camouflaged over millennia is enough of an experience to make one want to kneel down and worship the inherent nobility of the people who in their times created this, as much as nature’s resilience and restorative capacity if undisturbed.
As I discovered on a visit last year, Belize is an awesome example of the sheer magnitude of the Mayan civilisation from the numbers of still standing temples, many indiscernible as with centuries of overgrowth they appear as innocent hillocks that support dense forest ecosystems. And while the ruins might point to the historical past tense, the vivacity of the people I met and the friends I made is testimony to a vibrant living heritage.
I could not have asked for a better induction than to have expert guides in Drs Nigel Encalada and Allan Moore of the Belize Institute of Technology, who are part of the National Institute of Culture and History of Belize, on a one day cross-country drive to the Mayan mountains.
It whet my appetite that before I left I made time to explore three more sites with local Mayan guides at Altun Ha, Lamanai and Xuantunich - who incidentally took pride and the time to put into context the deliberately distorted and misrepresented for hype the end of calendar/doomsday story. In fact, these sites have been only partly unearthed of the hundreds of other complexes.
To some degree, Belize has legal and institutional mechanisms: an Act, laws, oversight institutions which may be challenged by shortage of human resource and other capacity, but those are also largely reactive mechanisms, as important as they are, to net culprits after the fact of a bulldoze, for example, rather than sustainable pre-emptive mechanisms which are where the focus should be.What could have stopped the company from issuing the order or the guy himself driving the bulldozer to halt and think twice?
If we cannot build consciousness and recognise the value these elements of our heritage, hold to the sense of self and esteem that could prevent the next trigger happy youngster from bulldozing his own life – value beyond commercial value, beyond the next access road and the next high rise and the next exploration for an oil well – which incidentally is another impending threat to Belize where recent interests in exploitation for petroleum can become the next international heritage disaster story.
The bulldozer mentality will stay with us unless mechanisms are built into our budgeting and physical and mental spatial development planning, as in all other development plans so we present and project that physical, social and educational planning not separate silos and never the twain shall meet, but as a seamless and essentially integrated system that depend on and support each other.
Is that being taken into account in the current land use planning  for sustainable development currently being undertaken in Trinidad and Tobago and other parts of the region? Where are the efforts to factor and integrate sustainable heritage consciousness into all of this, other than the flag waving mentality? Where are the plans to factor in heritage in the planning for sustainable development and the strategic educational interventions into that process that move beyond a few Kodak advertising moments?
Lost, surely in the cliched excuse about the jostle for space for industry and agriculture and shelter in the name of development.
Development does not have to be at the expense of heritage or vice versa. There are enough successful models of this that can make us confident that we can find the right balance between feeding ourselves, living with all the modern comforts that one may desire and at the same time showing respect and pride in the legacy and inheritances that are ours.
The alternative is the next regional bulldozer story - while Belize becomes a footnote, as McLoed house in South Trinidad already has - this is the potential fate of other sites in the region; like the Banwari and other related sites in Trinidad; or the Pitons in St Lucia or the maroon and other distinctive heritage of Jamaica’s majestic Blue Mountains and others across the region can soon become. Sustainable development requires sustainable planning and sustainable education and awareness activities.



Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2

WHO WILL BE DEMOKRISSY's 25000th READER? The Count Is On....
PLS RESPECT OUR COPYRIGHTS: You can contribute to these efforts by purchasing the books for friends, schools and institutions; or requesting our customised LiTTours or LiTTributes - Email lolleaes@gmail.com for details 

So masmen are enflamed. Again. Over prize money. Again. Are at loggerheads with the powers that be. Again.
It's the continuing saga of bacchanalia.
Unless we weed out the endemic systems of dependency on which the celebrations were founded; and the governance system recast itself as mechanism that has the will to act; to revamp and develop adequate systems and structures and institutions that nurture and support artists and creators in ways that make them self-reliant, and that make the Carnival and other Festival Arts into the viable and sustainable creative industrial sector they can be, the recurring impasse over prizes, prize structure and prize money for pan, mas, calypso, soca, chutney, stickfighting, Hosay, Divali,  Phagwa, Pichakarie, and everything in between would remain the never-ending story.
Somewhere in there is also the recurringly invisible cultural policy in state of perpetual draft over the last 50 odd years of so - yes, 50 years - and each time it resurfaces merely replicates the dependency syndrome!
Is it any wonder that we cannot see our way, despite the rich amalgam of talent and creativity we exhibit in our daily lives. Shortsightedness continues to doggers.
Where are the well-thought-out budgets that look beyond just the annual seven day wonder to an Industry? That takes into full account the contributions and the value - social, economic, political and other value included - of the cultural sector so budgetary focus can match that contribution, not reflect tokenism.
Where is the vision for building proper supportive trade and commercial structures and mechanisms?
Where are the mechaniims and facilities and facilitation for those more meaningful forms of compensation as insurance, pensions, support grants, support training and services that would build and strengthen the sector so ever so regularly we would not have to hear of how another of our artists is close to the breadline?
And where is the will by those in the sector - policy and decision makers, the corporate sector, and practitioners alike, to make it happen?
Are we really serious. Who's fooling whom?
These are some of the endemic systematic changes and modes for institutional reform in a culture of transformation that discussions on constitutional reform should also take into account - how to redress the kind of institutional malaise that are inhibiting progress and meaningful development and effectively restructure public institutions, their relationships with the state and the state's relationships to the civic mechanisms that they ought to sustain.

Friday, March 4, 2011

100 Days-100 Ways for UN Women. Stimulating the gender agenda

The challenge to the gender agenda is real to impact effective change.


Deeper analyses on capacity of women leaders for change; challenges, solutions given belief that even where women’s leadership and participation have increased, there has not been concurrent impact on their spheres of leadership. As primary transmitters of culture, knowledge, education, women have not been changing, but replicating and transferring habits, beliefs and practices that promote inequalities to the boys as much as girls. Address perceived lack of impact women leaders have been making in their spheres beyond the victims’ veil/as recipients to shapers and molders of modes/models of governance to direct targeted programmes/actions and meet targets for gender equity.









Listen: Changing the Conversation Gender & Development at Inauguration of First Female President


“100 Days → 100 Ways” for UN Women e-camp@ign launched!

The official launch of UN Women, the United Nations entity for gender equality and women’s empowerment, took place on Thursday, February 24th, marking a new era for women not only at the UN but around the world. The event, “Honouring the Past:  Envisioning the Future for Women and Girls,” was an historic occasion. The new women’s entity is now in the midst of its first 100 days and in the process of developing its strategic plan. Now is the time to provide inputs and suggestions to UN Women on how it can best serve the needs of women and girls around the world. What type of new UN Women are you envisioning? What concrete suggestions can you provide to Ms. Michelle Bachelet, the new Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women? 

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day this year on March 8th, and the first 100 days of the new UN women’s entity, the “100 Days → 100 Ways” for UN Women e-camp@ign is being launched to collect over 100 contributions from around the world on how the UN Women can better serve women, promote women’s human rights and be a champion for achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment. These contributions will be directed to, Ms. Michelle Bachelet, Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, and delivered to the UN Women.  March 8th will be a day of action for the “100 Days → 100 Ways” e-camp@ign.  

At the UN Commission on the Status of Women at the UN Headquarters in New York, the Feminist Task Force of the Global Call to Action against Poverty, organizers of the “100 Days → 100 Ways” e-camp@ign is being formally announce the “100 Days → 100 Ways” e-camp@ign at the Grassroots Women’s Speakout on UN Women event on Wednesday, March 2nd which Ms. Bachelet will attend.  The final compilation of the 100 Days -> 100 Ways e-camp@ign will be delivered at the end of the 100 Days in April.  

Deeper analyses on capacity of women leaders for change; challenges, solutions given belief that even where women’s leadership and participation have increased, there has not been concurrent impact on their spheres of leadership. As primary transmitters of culture, knowledge, education, women have not been changing, but replicating and transferring habits, beliefs and practices that promote inequalities to the boys as much as girls. Address perceived lack of impact women leaders have been making in their spheres beyond the victims’ veil/as recipients to shapers and molders of modes/models of governance to direct targeted programmes/actions and meet targets for gender equity.

Dr Kris Rampersad,
Media, Cultural and Literary Consultant
Author: Through the Political Glass Ceiling & Finding a Place
International Relations Director, Network of NGOs of Trinidad & Tobago for the Advancement of Women



100 Days-100 Ways for UN Women: “100 Days → 100 Ways” for UN Women e-camp@ign launched!

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