Due to time constraints, on Friday we were unable to present any portions of the address by Education Minister Patrick Faber as he wound up the debate on the Education and Training Bill. But the hour long address is worth revisiting because it was remarkable in many ways, for its passion, its outspoken-ness and even its emotionalism.
Hon. Patrick Faber, Minister of Education
“I do wish to join with you to say thanks from the onset to my senior management staff and also all of those people in my Ministry of Education who work so hard everyday to make sure we deliver quality for the children of this country. Again I don’t wish to quarrel with the union but Mr. Speaker the facts are there, there are as plain as daylight. I am actually very sympathetic with my colleague teachers. I am not in that boat and I will demonstrate that to the members who are saying they want to see what alternatives can come up because they hear talking but they don’t hear alternative, I will teach you in a minute. Those teachers out there and those who have refused to see what we are saying are guilty of one of two things: one they are playing the fool because of politics because they have set up their operatives or two, they are ignorant in the true sense of the word ignorant; they don’t know any better.
The number alternative for corporal punishment is training for teachers. The reason why, and this is why I said they are two reasons why the teachers are congregating outside, craziness isn’t one of them. Two reasons, political agenda or ignorance in the true sense of the word, that the Belizean sense of the word. They are ignorant and that is not coming from me, the facts will show you that 60% of the teachers in this country do not have pedagogical training. I am not trying to be unkind to any one but that is the fact and the reason why we believe we have to pick up wi hand or pick up something to whap a child is because we don’t know what else to do. Well let me tell you what you can do, strategies in classroom management allow you to handle these situations.
You want me to be specific, I will. Cordel Hyde is a bad boy, he gives a lot of trouble, he is talking while the teacher is talking. How the system works with corporal punishment is you pass and you clap him two times and he shuts his mouth, he shuts his mouth because he is afraid. For a minute he harbours all thoughts of hatred for that teacher in his head, if even but for a while.
Mr. Speaker, there is such a strategy that you learn in classroom management, that you learn through training that will see you move as the teacher from in front of the classroom to the proximity of Rayford who is talking and immediately Rayford shots up. You know why he shuts up Mr. Speaker, because he knows you are the teacher and you are the authority figure. One strategy Mr. Speaker. The only reason a teacher will know to do that is by experience or by training.”
