Education standard dropping

IT is sad that our top students (or so we thought) cannot get into the Medical Faculty.
We could blame the University of Goroka (UOG) for teacher training, but not for falling standards.
Some 15 to 20 years ago the infamous outcome-based education (OBE) was fully embraced with the education reform.
It forever changed the heart and soul of teacher education and student learning.
Papua New Guinea students are brilliant, but the OBE system has let a whole generation down.
The major shift from standard-based education to reform, and introduction of vernacular in elementary schools throughout PNG, has cultivated a dumb population.
Not many rural students can progress.
Why? Decisions of the past 20-25 years have caught up and have borne fruit.
Like guinea pigs, we fell for it, and here we are reaping the results with a very bleak and disturbing future.
We should not be surprised that Medical Faculty cannot accept science foundation students.
We should not be surprised if universities produce rejects with poor grammar and half-baked literacy level students – who can barely speak adequate English nor can they write well.
Our English, science and mathematics have been compromised.
Look back to the OBE where it all started.
This was a systematic mind-numbing conceived plan by Australian education advisors to get PNG back to the Stone Age.
Schooling days in the village primary ‘T’ schools were better in the 60, 70s and the 80s.
This happened in the lifetime of many current politicians and educators.
So take some responsibility and do not be surprised
Band-aid solution to the failing education problem will not go away by having Australians teach English or Indians teach maths in high schools.
It will be another way of more boomerang aid going back Down Under.
We will be trying to re-mix and re-fix what was a deliberate plotted scheme, so that advisors and consultants could obtain another paper and make big bucks out our ignorance.
This spiralling down trend will go on for another 10-20 years, until the standard-based change trickles down and basic foundations are right in the whole education system.
We are into reaping the benefits of liberal OBE system.
We see a by-product of numbed-down intellects.
There is backward thinking with cult activities prevalent in schools.
Only higher level educating of the minds will shift the culture and the mind set for change into inventors, investors, creators and high-level achievers.
We need thinkers and movers – not slaves and low-level followers.
Current leaders in education and political echelons will carry the baggage for a while.
Heaven knows for how long.

Bomoteng
Lae