In response to Jali Gassa,
Jali Gassa: <<Ngorr Ciise asked: "Can you cite any DEVELOPED country where
Grade 9 students are prevented from taking their final exams because their
parents can't afford - thanks to an irresponsible and corrupt gov't - to pay
the exam fees?
And whilst we are at it: can you cite any period during the PPP when 53
Grade 9 students were prevented from taking their final exams because their
parents can't afford to pay their exam fees?"
Ngorr, first and foremost, it is very disingenuous of you to try to draw
parallels between 'DEVELOPED' countries and The Gambia. As such, I cannot
answer your question.>> Emphasis yours.
Gassa, you are so dishonest that it is sickening: you dishonestly ignored
why and who brought the ‘developed countries’ parallel into the exchange;
but, as usual, clumsily dodged the issue and started howling at ghosts you
keep imagining are on your path. To expose your deceit, let’s revisit the
genesis of the relevant parts of our correspondences we’ve had on this
thread. This is what you wrote which warranted me throwing some questions at
you:
<<I never promised you a rose garden, or did I? Even in the DEVELOPED WORLD
there are poor people struggling to stay alive and Gambia is no execption.
My point has always been that despite our deplorablable state, we are doing
our damnest to improve our lot. Remember we are still recovering from the
devastation of the former PPP's thirty-year mis-rule and ineptitude.>>
Emphasis mine
See you brought in the ‘developing countries’ parallel, which is why I posed
the question:
<<Can you cite any DEVELOPED country where Grade 9 students are prevented
from
taking their final exams because their parents can't afford - thanks to an
knew
irresponsible and corrupt gov't - to pay the exam fees? >>
It is crystal clear that it is you who brought developing countries into the
equation... but you dare have the nerves to accuse me of being disingenuous
simply because I asked you to substantiate your rhetoric? I suppose you’ve
had one too many at, ahem, Come Inn – tis the only way I can explain your
chuckle-headedness…
I knew all along you would be hard pressed to cite any specific case in
developed countries where kids are prevented from taking their final exams
because their parents can’t afford exams fees; I just seized upon another of
your deceitful and loopy reasonings to show that you are just another barrel
making noises you barely have any deep insights into.
As par the PPP record in education, you woefully failed to directly answer
the question I posed. This is the question I posed:
<<And whilst we are at it: can you cite any period during the PPP when 53
Grade 9 students were prevented from taking their final exams because their
parents can't afford to pay their exam fees?>>
In response, you wrote:
<<As to your second question as whether I can cite a period during the time
of the PPP when 53 Grade 9 students were prevented from taking final exams
because their parents could not afford to pay their exams fees, my answer is
that I can cite tens of thousand of cases much worst than this. Ngorr,
according to our 1993 census, the population of The Gambia was 1.2 million
and yet we had places for less than 20,000 pupils beyond grade 6. This means
that tens of thousands of school going children never made it beyond grade 6
each year. This should be quite obvious to anyone accepts the possibilty of
at least 5% of our 1.2 million people (60,000 children) were of school going
age.>>
First, you’ve fiddled the census figures – as Yus corrected you earlier. But
that is a non sequitur at this stage; it’s good we know you are incapable of
telling the truth for a second: you simply are an incorrigible lier. Second,
and most importantly, you haven’t answered the crucial question i asked:
<< Can you cite any period during the PPP when 53 Grade 9 students were
prevented from taking their final exams because their parents can't afford
to pay their exam fees?>>
You’ve cited no specific cases in your response indicating instances where
school children – during the PPP days – were prevented from taking their
final exams because their parents can’t afford their exam fees. Facts of the
contention between us is this: I cited the case of the 53 Grade 9 kids who
were prevented from taking their final exams because their parents can’t
afford to pay their exam fees as evidence that things are changing for the
worse in Gambian education. This is simply because exams fees – regardless
of the stage/level of exams being taken – were invariably cheaper and
something that was not a problem to the point where school children missed
out on their school leaving certificates because they didn’t take their
final exams as a result of this. I have never encountered any situation in
my time in the Gambia where a pupil was forcibly stopped from taking exams
because their parents can’t afford to pay their exams fees. I challenge you
again to cite an instance in the PPP era when more than 50 children were
stopped from taking their final exams because they couldn’t afford the exam
fees. To be sure, you yourself know where I’m pulling you at: the nuance of
the argument was affordability of education at the most basic level, or, one
of its cheapest components, i.e., exam fees. In a revelatory sentence you
wrote:
<< As to your second question as whether I can cite a period during the time
of the PPP when 53 Grade 9 students were prevented from taking final exams
because their parents could not afford to pay their exams fees, my answer is
that I can cite tens of thousand of MUCH WORST THAN THIS. >> Emphasis mine.
Meaning you unwittingly, even tacitly, agree that it is worst case scenarios
like school fees that were a deterrent under the PPP, and not cheap
components of education like exams fees, which, under the APRC, has become a
worst case scenario because people are getting poorer and poorer under their
watch. See, this is the point: there were, to be sure, numerous problems
with education under the PPP. Yet, despite their appalling record in
improving the country’s educational infrastructure, and the APRC’s “school
projects,” education was relatively cheaper and more affordable under the
PPP than under the APRC. Why? In real terms, Gambians were economically
better off under the PPP than they currently are under the APRC. This is why
exam fees was virtually a non-existent or, in extreme, a peripheral problem
in deterring people from finishing basic education without a school leaving
certificate. That is to say because people were relatively well-off –
economically – under the PPP, the current problems being encountered in
financing basic components of education like exams fees for final exams was
virtually non-existent or on the periphery. That is the nuance of my key
argument.
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