FORMER Education Minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh lambasts columnist Professor Theodore Lewis for an article published in a Newsday on Monday entitled Constitutional rights of black children.
Lewis has come under fire for his article especially from the United National Congress (UNC).
Member of Parliament for Chaguanas West Dinesh Rambally also criticised Prof Lewis for his statements that the UNC led by Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who is of East Indian descent, was biased towards those of her own descent. Prof Lewis named several top performing schools in his article.
Dr Gopeesingh said on Tuesday by singling out those schools, Prof Lewis, “recklessly and dangerously attacked, undermined and maligned the independence and integrity of their affiliate Maha Sabha and Presbyterian Boards, and their tremendous historical contributions to our country’s education sector.”
He said Prof Lewis must apologise to the education boards for his statements.
Referring to the Samsung project that Prof Lewis mentioned in his article, Dr Gopeesingh gave details of that project as he was education minister at the time.
He said Samsung Electronics’ highly acclaimed “Smart School Project,” which developed an integrated interactive learning platform for teachers and their students was launched in 2013 in 383 schools and more than 212,000 students in 72 countries, including Trinidad and Tobago. It also included the Non-Profit Organization Glasswing International.
Under this T&T Smart School Project, Samsung, at no cost, equipped 20 local schools (ten secondary and ten primary) with digital classrooms, inclusive of installation and maintenance, the latest electronic devices, teacher training, performance monitoring, and the use of reading comprehension software Progrentis.
These and many more factual details of this programme are widely publicised in numerous media reports and various public archives, including the Parliament’s Hansard Record of his contribution to the Budget debate on September 15, 2014, Gopeesingh stated.
He noted then, “We are one of the few countries in the world that has 21st Century smart classrooms. Twenty of our schools—ten primary and ten secondary—do now have 21st Century smart classrooms.
“There are only 600 schools throughout the world that we are aware of, because Samsung is the pioneer in it and Samsung has indicated that we are pioneers in this education process. That is where we have reached in ICT in education in our country. We have over 150 technicians servicing these schools, primary and secondary schools, and we have close to 300 ICT teachers in our schools and we are going to employ another 94 based on an assessment that we did.”
Gopeesingh stated, “Theodore Lewis’ questionable peddling of outright falsehoods in this matter is therefore nothing short of devious. He has seriously compromised his integrity and lost every shred of credibility. He must immediately withdraw these false, dangerous allegations and apologize to all concerned parties, including the Presbyterian and Maha Sabha Boards.”
He added that he was proud to serve under then Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar and was able to make new pathways in the education sector and also listed some of those achievements including the laptop programme.
He lamented that with the stoppage of that programme by the current administration, some 40,000 pupils lacked the necessary device that now required to do their schoolwork given the Covid-19 pandemic.
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