Is the Caribbean Education System Dumbing Down Kids?  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

As the new school year begins in many Caribbean territories today, blogger Guyana-Gyal, who writes in local parlance, questions the new direction education is taking throughout the region. From the practice of making children tote heavy backpacks instead of simply asking them to bring to class only the books they will be using, to the popular trend of “extra lessons” and increased amounts of homework, the blogger challenges the concept that greater testing results in smarter children:
Why aren't children allowed to play during school-term while they're studying? Why can they play only during the holidays? What kinda ignorant parents they breeding now […] They never hear that play is one of the most important ways to discover? To learn? To think? […]
And! Passing so many exams gon prove what? That they can sweat the books really well…and…what else? It gon make them more articulate, wiser, more creative, inventive, more thinking, more analytic? Really?