By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

PRIME Minister Perry Christie met an unemployed 34-year-old woman with eight children two weeks ago, he told teachers yesterday, pondering whether the country’s education system is equipped to help children who grow up with significant disadvantages.

“What are we concluding as to the environment that the child is hostage to or captured by and logically what do we expect given the hostility of the environment that those children are brought up in?” he asked.

Mr Christie, who himself was expelled from high school before being given a second chance, emphasised the need to not give up on students who fail to reach academic heights.

His remarks came during the opening ceremony of an inaugural education conference hosted by the Bahamas Union of Teachers (BUT) at the British Colonial Hilton Hotel yesterday morning.

“My concern is our educational system quite rightly focuses on advancing the kids who do well in school, but has the fundamental flaw of not being able to design a system to lift up and elevate those who were in my category who were deemed incapable of matching the smarts of those who were doing well in the class,” he said. Mr Christie highlighted the plights of two other people with whom he recently interacted, people who excelled in school but did not further their educational experiences.

“A young lady was brought to my office looking for a job recently,” he said.

“She had eight BGCSEs with good grades. And I asked her why were you not in the University of The Bahamas and she was finding it difficult to explain and ultimately she said, she got pregnant and her mother said she had to go to work.

“This is a child. I employed her because I wanted to give myself thinking time as to how to get this young lady, that had a similar experience to what I had, back into the mainstream and give her the opportunity to do the best I can.”

He continued: “I was dealing with applications with customs and there was a young man whose application I saw who had eight As, all the sciences As and was applying for a job with customs. So I looked at the form and called his phone number after 8pm in my office and said ‘this is the prime minister and I would like to speak to (the young man).’ He came on the phone and said, ‘this really the prime minister?’ I said ‘yes and what I would like to ask you is, why are you not at university?’ He said, ‘my mommy said I had to go to work.’ I said ‘is your mommy home?’ He said no. He said ‘my sister is home.’ I said ‘are they working?’ He said no and started to explain (his situation) to me.

“He went to one of the government schools but here we are in our country with kids who excelled in school but circumstances, be they economic or be it simply that the parents are not understanding or appreciating what educational opportunities exist and are available (are hindering them from going further); because they couldn’t get a full scholarship.”

Mr Christie implored teachers to recognise that “some of our gifted children are not getting the opportunities they should”.

“That’s where we have to put some focus,” he said. “Find a way for me please to recognise that there are many Perry Christies in that bottom tier of students.”