Email

Print

And that presentation by the Education Minister was impassioned, at times, even emotional. The youngest Minister in Cabinet has been under extraordinary pressure throughout the consultations and it’s only increasing. Today the Teachers’ Union heckled and disparaged him and former PUP Minister of Education Cordel Hyde gave him all that he could handle across the Assembly Floor. Here are portions of their presentations.

Hon. Patrick Faber, Minister of Education
“I know that there is a gathering of teachers outside who have come to register their discontent if you will against us passing this bill today. Mr. Speaker I have no quarrel with the teachers. I myself am a teacher, I have been a teacher for over ten years and love and care for all of those teachers who are out there. Make no mistake, in fact Mr. Speaker it pains me some of the remarks that they are shouting as I look through the window because I am not here to quarrel with them. We are here to better this education system, that is the bottom line.

They will not agree with me and they may even be discontented because of it but there is a serious faction of the union that is not with their leaders when they talk about we agree with the removal of corporal punishment and want to see alternatives. There is a serious faction, I know, I have toured this country, I have met with teachers in every district and town in this country and I have heard them say that we want to keep corporal punishment. But when they realize that it would be an issue then they started saying we will take corporal punishment out but let’s put in place something. And in fairness to Mr. George Frazer, he was the leader in that whole thing. He had from the onset said we need alternatives which we readily agreed to. There is no question in my mind as Minister of Education or in anything that we do in the Ministry of Education to say that we do not support putting in place an alternative structure. So for them to bring that is unfair.

There are operatives, particularly in the north, they have a right to do that, but I am pointing out to you as well that there is mischief abound and that some of the very same teachers out there, and there are over 5,000 teachers in this country, don’t you forget that. And let me tell you as well Member from Lake Independence, those teachers out there understand the issue. They understand, they are not here against this government for any corrupted practices like when you were in office. They are not here protesting against any major corrupted bad…like the scholarship scam….you were giving 5 year olds…he asked for it.”

Hon. Cordel Hyde, Minister of Education
“If you look listen to the Minister of Education you get the impression that those thousand plus teachers outside, dah crazy deh crazy, they nuh know what they are protesting against, they don’t have no reason to go off. If you listen to him that is the impression he gives. Now one thousand teachers can’t change their mind? They can’t agree with you six months before and now when it comes down to it and they see exactly what is in the Bill they can’t change their mind? What gives you the right to change your mind but they can’t change their mind? Do you know how many times you changed your mind between last week Thursday and this afternoon in the House? You can ask the member from Belize Rural Central how many times.

Your technical team wasn’t even prepared to come to the House Committee meeting last week Thursday to defend the bill, they weren’t even prepared. You know when they came, five hours after we started to meet and they changed and they made a bunch of amendments, some amendments that we didn’t even request, some amendments that had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with what the stakeholders asked for. Then we met again Monday, they changed it again. They changed amendments again. And then between last night and this morning you changed again, you have a bunch of amendments that you intend to change in the committee of the whole House. So why the teachers can’t change their mind? What makes you more special than them? What makes your technical team more special than them? You crazy or what brother, unu dah nuh God you know. Unu dah nuh God. Unu got the power from the people, they elected unu.

This Bill will not change the status quo one bit. It will not fundamentally change how education is managed in this country. The status quo remains the same. After all the hype, all the war of words, all the triumphalism from the Minister. After all that what we have is a Bill that will see the Teaching Services Commission do a task that was previously assigned to the Chief Education Officer, nothing more and nothing less. The commission will only make sure that the denominational managements dot the Is and cross the Ts as they hire, transfer, discipline or terminate teachers. That is it. The Teaching Services Commission will do nothing else. They will neither hire nor fire, discipline nor transfer, terminate nor dismiss teachers; none of the above.

On the matter of corporal punishment, on this matter, the Minister says we’ve been talking about abolishing corporal punishment for over ten years. Actually I was just going to say it’s been longer, far longer. But since the Minister is Socrates or some learned fellow, maybe he will give us a lesson on the alternatives to corporal punishment. He has been Minister for two years now, perhaps he has the alternatives in his back pocket.

If you are going to abolish corporal punishment in our classroom you better have a plethora of alternatives and you have to have that on the ready, not six months from now. I never tried to abolish corporal punishment brother, you are trying to do it. You are the one who is supposed to have the plethora of alternatives. In fact you better have those alternatives before you do away with corporal punishment. Any of you been in a primary school classroom lately? Well I have, I spent from September to December of 2009 volunteering in a primary school classroom. You better have corporal punishment or in its absence you better have something good. I am from the old school Mr. Speaker. As long as you nuh abuse my pickney, you could beat him if he is giving trouble. Straight up.

In the end Mr. Speaker this Bill went from being a Rolls Royce in conception to being a Pinto in delivery. The members of the Bishop’s Commission were the big winners. They actually wrote portions of the Bill for the Ministry, literally.”

And while the Education and Training Bill took center stage – there was another very important piece of legislation passed today. That was the Belize Constitution Seventh Amendment Bill which will establish the Caribbean Court of Justice as Belize’s highest court of appeal, thus replacing the Privy Council. We’ll have more on that later on in this newscast.