Dr. Franklin-Brown Says Standards are Falling.
A British-trained Saint Lucian educator is home with a mission to contribute to the development of the island’s school leavers.
Dr. Greta Franklin-Brown originally from La Clery left here in 1988 and qualified with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Oxford Brooken University in Women’s Studies before doing her Ph. D at South Bank University in the Sociology of Education looking specifically at Black women in the United Kingdom born to Caribbean parents.
While researching for her Master’s she discovered that there was very little research into Black Caribbean girls and their educational achievements, compared to their white peers and decided to change that.
Her Ph. D dissertation looked at the generational differences between the first generation of British born women of Caribbean descent and their daughters who attended UK schools in the 1960s and 1970s. Her work exposed the inadequacies of some of the stereotypes of indifference, disengagement and detachment of Caribbean parents, according to an article published in a London South Bank University research magazine..
The article quoted Franklin-Brown as saying: “Those first generation students felt that they received very little support from their parents in school, because they hadn’t realized that they were expected to participate in the education of their children.
She added: “When that generation became mothers, they used those experiences of education and applied various measures to support the academic indifference of their children.”
Franklin-Brown says she wants to contribute to St Lucia’s educational development.
“My observation is that the standard of education in Saint Lucia has fallen drastically”, she told THE VOICE. “There was a time when people going to the UK from Saint Lucia and the rest of the Caribbean earned compliments for their level of education which was considered superior to that obtained in the U.K. This is no longer the case”.
Franklin-Brown said she wanted to develop a programme to train young school leavers from Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and universities to develop skills in employment enhancement and getting ready for the job market.
She has already started discussions with the Ministry of Education and said the response has been encouraging. “I am just concerned every time I come to Saint Lucia to see the way the standard of education is falling away so badly.”
She was a lecturer at London South Bank University in the faculty of Law and Social Science, teaching Research Methods, Sociology, Researching Social Life and the Foundation degree. In further education she project managed courses for women in non-traditional roles for example painting and decorating, construction, and kitchen fitting.
Franklin-Brown is currently working on a book proposal to be edited by Palgrave -Macmillan Education division.
Whilst in Saint Lucia she project managed a home -work club at one of the secondary schools. The pilot scheme was run entirely on a voluntary basis with support from the St. Lucia Hotel and Tourism Association, and several hotels. She is looking to run the programme in September with another secondary school in the north of the island and again this is entirely voluntary.
She said: “As you may have guessed I’m very passionate about education and would like to see that young people are encouraged and supported through education.”
Franklin-Brown is Managing Director of her own company GFC Consultancy with headquarters in Oxford, UK.