Dear Editor,

What am I to understand or better yet, what should we understand by Garth Allen's article, Education and How We Use the Brain (Saturday 16 March, 2013)? There seems to be a double dichotomy throughout most of the article. The article criticises scientists and the well-educated who gets published. Mr Allen seems to mix up his postulations with a "little God complex", akin to an old Jamaican philosopher-king friend of mine (he is unpublished) who is always asking the rhetorical question, by exclaiming: "Sometimes I wonder if the same God we worship in Jamaica is the same God in other countries." That philosophical exclamation leads me to Mr Allen's trajectory on the God of Jamaica which in my interpretation visits upon us in Jamaica, poverty of finance and economics as well as poverty of problem solving our way out of these dilemmas.

If I as an educator at the very highest level, interpreting Mr Allen's article the way I do, I would have to believe that God is partial to Jamaicans in that the 20% of the brain power we use in Jamaica does not help us to problem solve our financial and economic woes. The determinant used here by Mr Allen confuses me, because according to him: "I am a fervent believer and supporter of education at all levels, since this is the gateway for individuals to enhance their intellectual capacity to think and reason and analyse the information floating in this world in order for them to achieve wealth and prosperity". Thus, according to Mr Allen, since we do not use the other 80% of our brain power, we must be lacking in something. I am therefore looking forward to reading Mr Allen's forth coming book, Freedom of Expression.

In my partial support of Mr Allen's part thesis, part hypothesis on, 'Education and How We Use the Brain', I have a question that Mr Allen makes reference to — Does Jamaicans ask sufficient questions of their Government? My confusion here about the asking of questions vis-a-vis people of Jamaica to the Government of Jamaica, resides on the most recent article I read on Jamaica and the IMF:

"IMF to Inject US$210 million in NDX Support" with an additional sentence stating: "the additional support will bring the amount of the fund to US$850-million up from the US$640-million that the IMF originally put into the facility when it was established in 2010 under the Jamaica Debt Exchange (JDX)"

I now return to what Mr Allen posited, that a well-educated person should be able to do. However, I am even more confused now by this US$850-million infusion by the IMF, and I count myself to be very well-educated. Since the Jamaican government and the IMF was aware of the original US$640-million, why play "target practice" with the Jamaican public to be chronically worrying and pushing public sector workers into agreeing to a wage freeze until 2015, while all along the IMF very well knows that there was a readiness to shore up Jamaica through additional NDX support.

The question then is: When will we as Jamaicans be able to get out of this? Even if I am only using 10% of my brain power to analyse this US$850-million infusion, I know that this US$850-million is not a free gift to Jamaica. Here comes the next question: Are we and will we (as Jamaicans/Jamaican Government) be held at ransom here? As Jamaicans, we need to have this explained in the very simplest way possible.

Dr Dudley Morgan

Worldwide Resources Training Centers - Yukon and Alberta

Calgary, Alberta