A senior education official wants parents to stop living vicariously through their children.
Dr. Roderick Rudder, Deputy Chief Education Officer (Planning & Development) at the Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation, made this call as he addressed the Barbados National Council of Parent-Teacher Associations’ (BNCPTA) “Moving up from third form to fourth form” – workshop on transition, held at the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) headquarters, yesterday.
He told parents not to hold fast to their dream of what they feel their children should pursue.
“Even though we pretend, not deliberately so, we seek to engage our children in making the decision, but really and truly in many cases, parents try sometimes to live out their dreams and aspirations through their children,” he pointed out.
“[However], there are times we have to give them opportunity to decide how best they are going to move forward because the journey is not ours… The journey of the parent doesn’t necessarily coincide with the future expectations of the child and therefore, you may have different paths leading towards success. But there are perquisites that we must take into consideration that will allow us to work very closely with our children or wards to guide
them, have constant conversations with them, but also maintain a focus, a dream, a vision and strategy leading towards success.”
The Deputy Chief Education Officer also took the opportunity to explain to the students that it is natural for them to want to explore different subjects than the ones presently chosen for their senior year of secondary school.
However, he urged them to set goals, stressing, “If there are no goals, that is a major obstacle. There is nothing wrong with not knowing where you want to go at this point, but you have to make a decision along the way – based on exposure to additional objects.”
Dr. Rudder further expressed, “I love our educational system from the point of view that from first to third form, students have a general education.
There is an opportunity to get a feel for the different subjects and even after fourth form, students can still make decisions going forward because at the end of fifth year – as students complete their CSEC subjects moving on either to CAPE or an Associate Degree – they may not necessarily follow the same path. Therefore, it is important that we expect that change will come along the way and embrace change as we move forward.” (TL)