Learning material on border issues for schools
The Ministry of Education recognises the importance of the border controversies and has begun to develop learning materials which will be used in schools as part of the social studies programme, Chief Education Officer Ed Caesar says. Toward this end the ministry has also begun the distribution of relevant publications on the border issues to secondary schools. Caesar spoke with reporters at a media briefing at the GTV 11 Studios on Homestretch Avenue last week. He said that Guyanese historian and former ambassador Cedric Joseph has provided the Ministry of Education with a package on the border issues between Guyana and its neighbouring countries. This material was distributed to secondary schools for their social studies programme last year. Joseph, a former lecturer in history at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, former high commissioner to Zambia and the United Kingdom and a former Head of the Presidential Secretariat under the Desmond Hoyte administration, has authored a publication on the Guyana/Venezuela border controversy. Caesar noted, too, that using the same material provided by Joseph the ministry has engaged another person to reproduce the information but in another form which will target children at all levels of the education system as well as the general public, especially young people. The new publications, he said, would contain graphics and be of a cartoon-style book. The ministry through the National Centre for Educational Resource Development (NCERD) is also planning to promote awareness of the issues through a series of videos in the school system. "We are going to push this in such way to attack all the senses," he said, adding that "we promise to look at it in video-form because that is critical." The video production, he said, will highlight Guyana's borders and the difficulties the country is experiencing as it relates to them. Patriotic songs will also be instilled at the nursery level. A programme being developed by the Allied Arts Unit of the Ministry of Education for this purpose is to be implemented during the current academic year. (Miranda La Rose)
 Follow the goings-on in Guyana
|