The Education Ministry of the Maldives has recently announced its intention to introduce co-educational primary schooling, starting with grade 1, into the four currently all-secondary single-sex facilities available in the country. A few disgruntled voices here and there, by certain groups the Ministry claims are trying to confuse the public in order to achieve personal goals at the expense of the nation. Overall, however, the relative silence of Maldivian parents, and the society as a whole, has been deafening.
And by silence, I mean silence. Few words have been said for, or against the Ministry's plans. And one can't help but wonder if politicians have been making mountains out of ant hills so often, that by the time a real issue did come forward, the people are too tired and frustrated of it all to give it a thought. Or is it that people really think that this issue is no issue in the first place?
Why am I getting so bothered about this anyway? What's the issue in it for me? As far as I can see, this is a move that can either make or break the future of our country. But since I do believe that the future of our country has been broken to a great extent — please refer to the drug abuse and criminal rate statistics among the youth — I suppose, more accurately, I believe this is a move that can either RE-make or FURTHER break the future of our country. And the cause(s) for this belief are as follows:
According to senior officials at the Ministry of Education — such as the Deputy Minister, Dr. Abdulla Nazeer, on a SunFM debate against PA MP, Mr. Abdul Azeez Jamal Abu Bakr — the main reason for this change is the gradually, and continuously, deteriorating academic and behavioural levels of the student bodies of these four government-run secondary schools. This is in contrast to privately-run schools, as well as government-run primary schools, which have been maintaining, if not improving, their levels of academic and behavioural standard.
The Deputy Minister further stated that night that the Ministry has conducted an experimentation on the students of Imaduddin School, a government-run, previously primary only school, by allowing those who graduated from the primary level to continue in Grade 8 within the same school institution and the same co-educational framework that which they have been accustomed to throughout primary level. The Ministry found that the students, when given this opportunity were able to maintain their academic levels, in contrast to students who are changed to secondary-only single-sex schools.
It is the Ministry's assertion that this proves that co-education fosters academic excellence as well as social and behavioural compliance. Going by this assertion, following the proper implementation of this plan, Maldives will see higher levels of productivity and reduced levels of delinquency and criminality among secondary school graduates.
Only glitch to this marvellous plan is that the basis of this assertion is not necessarily right. Anyone with the slightest know-how about social research and experimentation knows that in order to ensure the accuracy of the results it is necessary to control and minimise the effects of factors other than the one in consideration that could affect the turn-out. Alternatively, the sample needs to be big enough, or the observation period long enough, to render the effects of these other factors small enough to be ignored.
This was not observed at all by the Ministry of Education in their little experimentations. There was no control on the environments of the four secondary schools and other schools when the Ministry made assertions regarding the deteriorating academic and behavioural standards of the said school, nor when the Ministry conducted the experiment on the students of Imaduddin School. Nor was the observation made in a long enough period: The observation of the academic results of Imaduddin students was done in just one academic year. This being the case, there are many other factors, other than co-education — or the lack of it — that could be the reason for the disparity between the academic and behavioural standards of the student populations in the four secondary schools and other schools.
Factors such as better and stricter management: I've been informed countless times from students studying in Majeediyya and Dharumavantha schools that the management staff and teachers are scared to take disciplinary action against certain delinquents for fear that they, along with their gangs, will come and retaliate for it afterwards. And it was quite recently that I was told that a student of one of the female schools was given only 2-weeks suspension after being caught with illegal drugs on school grounds, and then allowed to come back to school. I have yet to hear of such terrorist-victim relations between the teachers and students, respectively, of private schools, or of such leniency in dealing with even criminal delinquency on school grounds.
Factors like better parent-teacher cooperation: Parents in government-run primary schools have direct contact with the teachers who instruct their children. They have direct access to the classrooms their children study in. They are able — rather, encouraged — to come to class during school hours and observe their children while they study. As opposed to that, parents of students in secondary schools meet their children's teachers on rare occasions: the first day of school, maybe; parent-teacher meetings; if the student gets into trouble at school. Even to parent-teacher meetings, some students prefer to take a friend of theirs so as to prevent their teacher(s) from having a direct conversation with their parents or guardians.
Factors like the difference in the curricula: Dr. Nazeer in his SunFM debate spoke of how Arabiyya School and Mauhad, the only two institutions in Male' currently providing education with a focus on Islamic revealed knowledge, are able to produce productive graduates with very little level of delinquency or criminality recorded among them, while employing co-education system. What he failed, or neglected, to notice is the huge difference between the curricula taught in these schools and other government-run schools.
Look, don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying co-education is wrong. I can't prove it, and I have no interest in trying. I studied in co-educational schools, and I turned out just fine, even if I say so myself. It's just that the whole country seems to have reached a consensus that the issue here is co-education vs. single-sex education, and I just wanted to get that out of the way. Neither co-education — nor single-sex education, for that matter — is a magic pill that will solve all the problems in the educational system, and neither one is a poisoned apple either. And as far as I've read into research done about the issue, there is simply not enough data to conclude that one is better than the other.
But that's not the only problem with this plan. It's not even the primary cause of concern in this plan. The plan is to introduce grade 1 in the four schools. Schools that, according to the Deputy Minister of Education — and what better authority on this matter than him? — have reached such a level of delinquency and academic failure that the Ministry had to decide to take unconventional measure in order to bring even the slightest improvement to them. What's wrong with that?
Have you ever seen the desk tops and the toilet walls of these schools? Any one of them? I remember going to one of these schools back in 2003 — yes, back then it was just Majeediya and Ameeniya school — with my classmates to use its chemistry lab. (Back then, Mauhad, the school I studied in, didn't have a chemistry lab, so we were forced to beg other schools like science-school orphans to use their labs.) I had the honour of sitting at a desk on top of which a crude picture of homosexual sex was etched in with a sharp object — most probably a compass pin. The table right next to mine had a newsflash on top of it that a certain boy had f***ed a certain girl, and that she was a s**t. That was back in 2003. Now, seven years on, I'm told that there are some students who take stashes of illegal drugs to the school, carry them to the toilet, and smoke, sniff, inject, and — of course, who can forget! — trade them.
By introducing grade 1 into these schools, we are potentially exposing 7-year-olds to obscene language, graphic illustrations of sexual nature, and illegal drugs. I've come across people who seem to claim that if these things are there in the society, then it's better to let children have enough exposure to them, along with proper guidance. As one person put it, 'One cannot hide children from the world.' If this is a sensible excuse to expose 7-year-olds to the things I mentioned earlier, then there is nothing wrong with handing over the latest issue of the Playboy magazine to them either; there is nothing wrong with taking them along to an R-rated or 18+ rated movie; there's nothing wrong with letting them watch the meth-creation process. As long as you give them proper guidance.
Apart from that, the level of violence among the students of these schools is also at an alarming rate. Smaller students have been bullied and victimised by bigger students — bigger either in their personal size or their gang size. Let alone students; even foreign teachers have been beaten up by student gangs — for low marks, reporting bad behaviour, taking disciplinary action, etc. Cat fights among girls get just as gruesome as gang fights do among boys. In 2005, an eighth-grader in Majeediya School chose to end his life over going to school. The incident was never thoroughly investigated.
By introducing grade 1 into these schools, we are potentially exposing 7-year-olds to being victimised by older and bigger students. One might say that although older students bully each other, they probably won't bully children as young as 7 year old. I'm not so sure about that. I was told by a student in one of these school about the reason why the windows were permanently locked down by the school management. Apparently the students of one class that over-looked an open yard of a house thought it was funny to throw stones and pebbles at a toddler who was laid to sleep in the yard, until the poor thing was black and blue. Even if the assumption that older students won't bully younger students were taken to be true, research shows that even witnesses of bullying may suffer from negative psychological effects due to their experience, especially if they are not given proper attention and counselling. In a country where a bullying-related suicide went uninvestigated, one can't help but wonder how much attention the witnesses of bullying might get.
Last I checked, Section 5 of the Child Protection Act (Act No. 9/91) of the Maldives stipulated that government institutions must provide children with places suitable for their play and entertainment, to the best of the nation's economic capability. The rising crime rates within the country has for the most part rendered public parks and open areas unsuitable for children to go out and play. The only remaining area then will be the school grounds. But stuffing first-graders alongside delinquent secondary-school students, is the Ministry of Education trying to make even school grounds unsuitable places for children to go out and play?
Last I checked, Article 35 (a) of the Maldivian Constitution stipulates that it is the right of every child to be given special care and special protection by the family unit, by the society and by the government. Will the Ministry of Education be able to give these first graders the special care and special protection that they are entitled to, when they implement this plan? And are Maldivian parents living up to their constitutional responsibility of providing their children with special care and protection when they remain silent and blindly give a vote of confidence to the Ministry's plans?
Or is it that our 'commitment' to protect children is a mere word of the mouth? Or perhaps a sword we can yield to silence some sectors of the society?
