The sentiments expressed in this edition by Mr Hopeton Henry, the president of the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA), are a must read for all well-thinking Jamaicans as Education week 2007 gets underway today.

For Mr Henry's interpretation of the theme under which this year's exercise will be staged - Quality Education - A National Responsibility - is axiomatic.
According to Mr Henry, Jamaica will not achieve a quality education system until it is acknowledged as a national responsibility.

This means - as Mr Henry so neatly puts it - that education has to be everybody's business if the country hopes to keep pace with the thrust by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) to achieve quality education for all by 2015.
The formula seems simple enough on paper, but as usual, it is the enactment that harbours the Shakespearean rub.

For the business of making education one's business calls for a level of stamina, discipline, honesty and selflessness that is not automatic in too many individuals. Indeed, some of the recent behaviour exhibited by grown people who should be conscious of the need to set appropriate examples for the edification of our nation's youth speaks to a total disregard for the concept of education.

We refer to the assaults - verbal and otherwise - as well as other instances of anti-social behaviour that have been reported in this and other sections of the media in recent weeks.

This type of behaviour, we believe, points to a failure on the part of too many to recognise that education involves the modification of behavioural traits, through formal and informal channels, which include modelling, observation, and interaction.

It is unfortunate that this space could not accommodate the late Dr Dorothy Law Nolte's world-renowned classic exposition: Children learn what they live.

For embodied in that simple poem, which has served as a comprehensive guide to thousands of parents and teachers all over the world, are the consequences of raising children on the positive values of encouragement, tolerance, praise, acceptance, approval, recognition, sharing, honesty, fairness, kindness, security and friendliness, as opposed to criticism, hostility, fear, pity, ridicule, jealousy and shame.

Education Week, through its various activities, will provide an opportunity for many to explore and analyse the many facets of the teaching/learning process in contexts that range from the home to the classroom.
We hope that everyone will extract something useful from it.

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