It is the vision and ambition of the Minister of Education to improve our education system by addressing a series of challenges. One of the challenges will be to upgrade the quality of teaching and learning.

No real reform can happen unless we have the best pedagogical practices. This is where we need to start if we want to achieve something.

As a part of the reform movement, there is, for example, an urgent necessity to develop thinking and writing skills in our students. In fact many students find it difficult to express themselves clearly and grammatically well on paper in English and French as well as orally.

Even in upper classes we have students resenting to submit an essay because writing does not come easy to them. They feel complexed as a result. Their inability to write well and present their ideas coherently hinders them in other subjects as well.

Our existing system has taken this for granted and has encouraged students to move from

one class to another without really grasping the basic skills of writing. Take a look at the written work of a Form 4 or Form 5 or General Paper student and you will be shocked to discover that many of them cannot write up to the standard expected.

How is it possible that, despite the inevitable private tuition, many students of Form 5, about to sit for their final exam, are still unbelievably confused over basic grammar and spelling or the layout of a letter for their Directed Writing component?

Parents are worried. They cannot understand whether their children are incompetent at learning or whether the teacher is bad at his job.

Something is not going round in our present system. Now that the Minister is planning meetings with stakeholders, it is a good opportunity to raise the issue of looking againat teaching and learning strategies with rectors and teachers. Missing this chance would be to the disadvantage of the students who will grow up to communicate badly in writing or orally. Oral examiners for Cambridge know only too well the catastrophic level of a good number of candidates in reading and conversational skills.

Most of the kind of work our students are called upon to do is formula-based. We do have a number of extra-curricular activities in this connection but only a handful of students participate in them.

What must be encouraged is critical thinking. One trend today is copying out material from Wikipedia and other sites for essaysand projects. Many young people believe that whatever is available on the Internet is necessarily valuable and unquestionable.

This cut-and-paste mentality is something that questions us because we want to have students who can stand on their feet, think for themselves, and not copycats. We need to do away with a system that tolerates lifting. We must, and it is high time, find the means to boost critical thinking in our schools. Only good teaching can lead to good learning. Any serious reform must prioritize a re-consideration of our teaching and learning methodologies.

Editor’s note: The printed text is the original document and has not been edited.