The Ministry of Education was on Thursday forced to withdraw a primary school textbook following concerns raised by the Toshao and residents of the indigenous community Chinese Landing in Barima Waini (Region 1).
The Social Studies textbook Guyanese in the World issued for Grade Three students painted a fictional story about the Toshao at Chinese Landing in Region 1 who had refused the school feeding programme because he thinks the money is not enough and an insult to the children.
As part of the exercise in the book, students were asked to discuss the story, however the community’s new Toshao Nikita Miller in a statement issued on her facebook voiced her concerns.
Miller in shedding light on the original incident said the former Toshao, Orin Fernandes never refused or commented concerning the school feeding programme, instead he constructed a concrete kitchen with royalties paid to the village. The funds allocated by the government had been insufficient, but the cheque was deposited, and the money never withdrawn.
According to Miller the concrete structure was built as wooden buildings would have been destroyed by termites very quickly.
Miller said to see the negative information printed in a textbook to be taught in schools about the Toshao and the community of Chinese Landing is quite disturbing as she questioned the motive behind printing such inaccurate and defamatory information.
She said the new kitchen is serving the community well, as she mentioned that the village is still in the court with the government over its land title.
After the backlash Chief Education Officer Saddam Hussain in a less than three-minute recorded statement apologised for the insensitive material.
“As chief Education officer, I want to say that the Ministry of Education deeply regrets the offense or the distress that has been caused. The parents, students, to the wider community and especially to the residents of Chinese Landing. The ministry of Education has always prided itself on ensuring that we provide high quality, inclusive, culturally sensitive, educational material”.
Hussain said the published material was clearly a failure of the ministry’s quality assurance mechanism.
“I want to assure members of the public that this error will be fixed. Our quality assurance mechanism will be relooked at in an effort to ensure that this does not happen again. This book will be immediately withdrawn, reviewed, and then reprinted for distribution. I want to offer our unconditional apology for the errors which have been found in this book. We acknowledge that the materials are quite insensitive. While it is a scenario that has been presented, there are several other scenarios which could have been used which were not as sensitive as this. And so the Ministry of Education again offers its sincerest and unequivocal apology”.