Touria PRAYAG
20 December 2007
opinion
Port Louis — Watched politicians talking about themselves in the third person singular. Recently, we have also heard chairmen and ex-chairmen of para statal bodies talking in the first person singular about the achievements of the Institutions they used to head or are heading.
We have listened to so-called advisors and ex-advisors proclaiming how indispensable their advice is to the country and others reacting like children whose favourite toy has been snatched away from them when they were deprived of a trip overseas which was supposed to change the destiny of the earth.
After watching the waves made by people who, through political patronage, rose from nothing to still nothing, in an ocean of intellectual paucity, Arvin Boolell's reflections on his childhood, "You can always bounce back to become a better person" ("l'express", 18 December) are such a breath of fresh air. They are so humbling and oh how inspiring!
With a humility which is typical of him, Dr Boolell concedes that «on the academic level, I was certainly not a role model» and admits that because he did not get the junior scholarship he was competing for, his parents were very disappointed and he "began developing an inferiority complex towards the other members of [his] family who got through that exam".
This admission of early failure should be a lesson in humility to all of us and especially to those of us whose only claim to fame are the huge sums of our hard-earned money which we shove in their pockets every month through taxation and who bombard us with their self-importance. But more than this, it should inspire us all to think of how many other "late developers" there are out there.
How many of these are left behind every year by an inhumane system happy to dole out scarlet letters and brand children as failures for life. How many of those who make it are no better off than those left behind. How many indeed will never bounce back to be able to exorcise the feelings of inferiority the way Arvin Boolell has. How many more will our educational system sacrifice before we realize that an eleven-year old child is simply too small to be written off. When are we going to save the Arvin Boolells of this country from the shame and the inferiority complex they do not deserve?
I vaguely remember a debate, unfortunately tinted with religion, ethnicity and politics, which nonetheless came to the conclusion that there was no disagreement about the nine-year schooling. There was, if my memory holds me right, a general agreement that it was a more humane approach to education.
I also seem to recall a minister promising that that would happen and that we had to go through the grading system to get to it. Although our rational minds could not see how this is likely to be a logical progression, we still bit the bullet and waited. Now the question is: are these reforms going to be introduced any time soon or are our hopes and expectations going to see us through to the end of our lives? When will this nation's children really come first ?
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