AS he delivered the keynote address to the dual gender audience in the crowded Berbice High School Auditorium at the launch of Education Month on Wednesday, Professor Daizal Samad, Director of the University of Guyana Tain Campus, challenged regional educators to transform themselves, even as they sought to transform the nation through inclusive education.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we shall transform this nation only if we transform ourselves, me and you together and singly. If we do not know what it means to be a father or mother or son or daughter or sister or brother or teacher or doctor or police officer, then how can we understand a nation, a thing much bigger than ourselves?” he questioned.
“It takes hard work to answer this. It takes honesty of analysis, the cruel honest truth about ourselves,” he posited.
Highlighting the theme, ‘Transforming the nation through inclusive education’, Professor Samad questioned its meaning, and thereafter asked, “Transforming the nation from what to what? Is it from insularity, petty politics, isolation, racist sentiments, gender bias, rape, breaking bottles on the road after I finish a beer, beating my wife to vent my frustrations, driving in the most irresponsible fashion, moral turpitude, and coming to work without any thought of work, if we show up at all?
“We shall transform our nation if, and only if, we cure these ills,” Dr Samad said.
He noted that nations are transformed bit by bit, individual by individual, action after action.
“Your job is not enviable, as who puts the children of others before their own children?” he questioned.
“But that, educators, is what it takes to transform nations. Transforming of this Guyana depends on you; in the way you conduct yourselves, the way you do your jobs, the manner in which you relate to your neighbours,” the professor posited.
Defining the term “inclusive education”, the professor opined that it includes each child and every citizen, including the disabled, who will find a home in the system.
“Education of drivers to be cautious, and not go on drunken sprees that may result in the slaughter of our human resources; having a vested interest in all institutions of learning, including the police training colleges, religious and social groups, the chambers of commerce and the public libraries.
“Because we do not know that we are a part of this inclusive education, we will continue to drive the way we do; beat our partners the way we do; conduct the affairs of law and order the way we do; care for our sick and elderly and handicapped the way we do,” he posited.
Samad questioned his attentive audience, “When did the nation abandon pride as a people? When did we marry ourselves to the betrayal of ourselves and all around us? I pray unto you to do include all and exclude none, so that this nation shall be indeed a nation, small but beautiful to behold.”