Recently the Minister of Education, Shawn Edward, alluded to a systematic crisis, when he stressed upon an audience of scholars that he was worried and needed to see more young men in the room and on the applications for scholarships for higher education when compared to young women. He noted that the official position of the Ministry was one of meritocracy in the allocation.
But the overtime reduction of males was a crying call for concern, and as such he suggested the ministry also believed there needs to be a balance when distributing educational opportunities.
Two things can be true! The minister was therefore alluding to our own internal educational DEI which, by the way, contrary to the Trumpian notion, does not eradicate meritocracy but enhances it. How might you ask? Well for starters, DEIs are not unqualified for the respective posts, but as some might argue accurately, they have already worked twice as hard to get half of what their competitors have, and to merely get in the door.
It is because their underlying and enabling circumstances have made success more unattainable than their counterparts. As such, bearing these circumstances in mind must be critical in order to rewrite their historical marginalisation. The minister is correct, mere academic scores should not be the sole criterion for educational opportunities, but our social justice lens should take into consideration the underlying circumstances that inform these scores, such as presence or lack of parental support, geographical discrimination or alienation, socio-economic background, and other skillset. These should inform the provision of educational support in order to ensure education is truly the great equaliser.
Dr. Tennyson Joseph’s view albeit on another point is thus instructive when he noted that “the highly intelligent child is equally likely to be born in the hut of the poor as in the mansion of the wealthy. It is this realisation which should inform progressive state funded education policies which start from the premise that no child with potential should be denied a university education.”
But the point here is that the Minister’s isolated statements is emblematic of a systematic crisis. It should never be blamed though on the individual predilections of boys, which may include our own internal convictions about how boys seem only to be going around and causing havoc, as reflected in our crime rates.
It is a systematic crisis which must be dealt with, and sober reflections are required. The problem, therefore, is as Dr Didacus Jules described it, not simply a narrative of individual failure but is an expression of systemic meltdown.
What the minister did not say, however, is that the systematic crisis is deeper and started long before the lack of applications. For a long time, our data has told us about male underachievement, male underrepresentation, or the marginalisation of the Caribbean male as popularised by Professor Errol Miller in our education system.
The latest Educational Statistical Digest of 2020 has more jarring and startling figures that suggested:
- Out of the 1910 students who were enrolled in the SALCC, only 704 were male, which is 37%. It means that the majority of males are opting out or are unable to attend tertiary level institutions. This trend where male representation in tertiary level education is about 30% has actually been present from 2010.
- Further, at Monroe College, there has been an enrolment of about 18% of males year after year.
- When one looks to the National Enrichment and Learning Program, i.e., certification in tiling, plumbing, electrical installation, cake decorating, among other areas, there has also been over the years, a 28% male enrolment. This not suggest however that the anecdotal data wherein men may not be opting to receive formal certification should not be researched and taken into consideration as part of our tally.
- In NSDC, the enrolment of males also hover around, 10 and 12%.
But, when one looks to educational achievement, the data also suggest a startling picture, where on average only 30% of scholarships and economic cost awards are awarded to males. The crisis is even more acute, because male performance in CPEA, CSEC & CAPE, only trail about 3% difference between the males and the females, with one source suggesting that females received 76% pass rate in CSEC, while males received 73%. This must be seen in light of the 5 subject prerequisite which seems to be the basis of employment and further educational opportunities.
But our marginalisation, is not unique as the regional data suggest that:
- More boys of lower socio-economic groups suffer stunted growth than girls.
- There is a growing tendency for boys to start school later, attend more irregularly, drop out more often, repeat more grades, have lower rates of completion of schooling, lower levels of achievement and less access to tertiary education compared to their female counterparts.
- Less males than females are enrolled in and are graduating from tertiary education institutions.
- More boys and men are patients in the psychiatric wards or hospitals than girls and women.
- More boys and men are committing violent crimes than girls and women, and of course more men are being incarcerated in correctional institutions and maximum-security prisons.
The data is simply confirming for us that what already we knew: there is a crisis affecting males in education and the wider society.
But on the flip side of this crisis is the intriguing question of what has motivated the success of those who have access to educational opportunity through tertiary education? What have the poster boys done that others may not be able to do and how can we use our successes to improve our educational outputs?
Well, the research by former Chief Education Officer Dr. Fiona Mayer-Charles is instructive and should inform our policy debate. In her work she has suggested that the young Saint Lucian men who pursued higher education did so for “internal desires to self-improve, to improve their families and their communities, because of the financial benefits associated with higher education.” Some of the young men Dr. Charles spoke to noted that “the strong influence of parents and families played a strong role in their pushing to attain higher education and providing them with support to realise their inner potentials and goals.” Some participants noted that it was also the attractiveness of knowing that they could receive higher financial renumeration and career advancement which motivated them to aspire to higher education.
As such, we must continue to heed these best practices above, by strengthening the Saint Lucian family to provide support and assistance to our young men, while instilling the value systems that prioritises educational advancement as a precursor to future success.
Note well, I did not say ‘academia’, but educational advancement, which does include technical and vocational training.
In order to cure this malady, there needs to be a focus on increasing our tracking methods, as we search in earnest for our young men who have almost vanished from the formal school setting. There remain many who were desirous of and had the intellectual acumen to pursue higher education. But we did not provide the requisite support and assistance. There must be a proper tracking and monitoring system in place to guide them naturally to that goal from very early. It means there must be a continued increase in financial support to young men to pursue education.
But appendaged to this, is the need to bring the educational opportunities to them, particularly those beleaguered by socioeconomic challenges and geographical disparities. Buju was instructive, when he lamented that “Who can afford to run will run, but what about those who can’t, they will have to stay cause opportunity a scarce, scarce commodity.”
While we seek to expand educational access, it must always be rooted in reducing the social issues that give rise to the low numbers. We still have a lot of work to do in alleviating hunger, poor nutrition, domestic strain and weak family structures.
There is also a need to submit our National Priority List to national democratic scrutiny, such that, young men around the country inform the areas they have interest in pursuing, for requisite funding. This list must also be aligned to the future of work and be sensitive to the perennial issues facing our country.
It is also not surprising though that young men do not view education for them, because they fall prey to the ill-fit of rote learning, memorisation, formal final examinations, memorising of answers for high stakes as opposed to alignment of the pedagogy with the 21st century, rooted in technology, critical thinking etc.
But in our quest to receive one university per household, there is a need to expand it to include one skill, as has been suggested by Dr. James Fletcher, in order to fully capture the aspirations and move away from our obsession with one modality of success, i.e., subjects. But our focus on skills cannot be based solely on low level skills within the service economy, which translate into low wages. We must invest in current and future skills that are value based, innovative and cutting-edge. As new technology starts to be introduced, more highly skilled workers will be required, and Saint Lucia must attempt to position itself to fill that skills void.
There is an urgent need in our educational transformation therefore to remove this dichotomy wherein people believe that TVET is relegated to those who are unable to use their head, so they must use their hands. While doing so, we must ensure that the TVET programming is reflective of the needs of the labour market- both current and future.
The solution is more than marketing!
There also seems to be a genuine concern, and it has been raised by Professor Sir Hilary Beckles in our Independence Lecture last year, that young men based on the research influenced by global capitalism, individualism and social media seem to be ‘worried’ with the length of time educational achievement takes. Moreover, they seem to be worried of their possible inability to receive a job upon their return, especially if they had one before.
These are real concerns that must be addressed, as to whether we can create compact programs which can cater to their needs or run the risk of losing them forever.
There is also a need for a massive resocialisation, which ensures that educational achievement is not seen through the lens of being ‘feminine’ by rooting our patriarchal notions of success which have dominated our discourse. The machismo view of education not being for males must be weeded out, as it makes men both victims and perpetrators of patriarchal myths.
An appropriate response has to be the strengthening of the presence of success stories of academia, which can excite young men as to the future possibilities the world has.
Dr. Charles’s suggestion that a support system where males are mentored to help them see educational attainment from a different perspective is worthy of trying. There needs to be a focus on finding mechanisms to make education more attractive to young men, by engaging them on what that would look like.
While these were not supposed to be prescriptive, there is a need for us to deal urgently with this malady of male underrepresentation and underachievement in education.
I could go on and on, but as Buju said, the full has never been told!
