FOUR year-old Josiah is a year ahead of his peers, according to the relevant authorities at the Emanuel Preparatory School which would have taken him into one of their most advanced kindergarten classes if his mother, Lorraine Rainford, hadn’t opted to continue teaching him at home.

Eighteen year-old Makonnen Blake Hannah didn’t go through the public school system or sit any of the external examinations which society holds up as marks of academic achievement.

However, he’s been offered a place at Harvard, one of the most highly-respected universities in the United States.

Neither Rainford, a trained journalist, nor Blake Hannah’s mother, Barbara, an author, journalist and filmmaker, hold teaching diplomas.

They’re both confident, however, that their children are faring better than they would had they gone through one of the state’s early childhood educational facilities or a private preparatory school. And according to a highly placed education officer who preferred to remain anonymous, they could be right.

“At that level — 3-6 years old — you don’t have to be a trained teacher to impart the required skills to the child,” said the education officer. “Other considerations aside, a healthy child will learn if provided with the right materials and guidance.”

In fact, according to the Moore method, developed in the early 20th century by Texas University lecturer, Robert Lee Moore, students will discover things and basically teach themselves, given the right motivation.

“I use a combination of the Moore method with the Abeka Curriculum,” Rainford told the Sunday Observer.

Abeka, a curriculum developed by the Pensacola Christian College in the United States of America, is used by a number of Christian preparatory schools in Jamaica, like Emanuel and Unity.

Rainford finds the teaching materials, the first outlay of which cost her approximately US$171, extremely effective. “The first set of materials lasted two years and they were very effective,” she said. “However, I agree with the critique of the curriculum, which warns that its emphasis on drill and practice could put too much pressure on the students, so I use the Abeka materials, but lean more on the Moore method.”

Said the critique to which Rainford refers: “Skills are mastered primarily through rote memorisation and drill, rather than through comprehension and application. It is the difference between memorising the parts of a flower and taking several flowers apart to compare them. If the recommended pace is followed, these kids will spend hours in their books and become good studiers. Some kids in Christian schools using this programme cannot take the pressure and burn out, becoming academic casualties.”

That aside, the programme has been commended by education officials.

“It’s a very good reading and numeracy programme which has netted successful results,” said the education officer. “It has to be borne in mind that it is an American curriculum, though, and so we advise its users to keep in touch with the Independent Schools’ Registry to ensure that it harmonises with the national curriculum.”

Records out of the Ministry of Education’s Independent Schools Registrar’s unit, which has the responsibility of ensuring that schooling which takes place outside of the State’s framework is in harmony with the national curriculum, show that at least six people have informed the unit of their intention to school their children at home.

“It could be more, but those are the records I have seen personally,” said another education officer.

“It’s a relatively new thing that is slowly increasing here… home schooling… and we require the parents to inform us when they take these decisions so we can monitor their progress,” said an education officer with the Independent Schools’ Registrar Unit.

The aim, according to the officer, is to ensure that the child, by age six, has acquired certain motor skills, can read at various levels, can understand words, write — transcribe words –, recognise colours and shapes.

“Everything’s integrated, so they will also have acquired basic social skills to integrate into their social environment,” said the officer.

That’s one of my greatest concerns with this home-schooling thing,” says three year-old Janelle’s father, who is sending her to the St Andrew Preparatory School, although he can barely scrape together the thirty-odd thousand dollar fee that the school is charging for its September term.

“She must go out — get out of the house — and make friends, it’s better for her,” he told the Sunday Observer.

Equally untenable for him is the option of sending the little girl to one of the Government-supported basic schools which charge substantially less — between $2,000 and $5,000 per term.

“The facilities and environment at the prep schools are better and their teachers are more qualified, so she’ll get a better education,” he said.

“Yes, it’s true that the preparatory schools do have more qualified teachers and better facilities, but it doesn’t follow that every child is going to get a better education there,” said Claudia Hibbert, principal of the $2,000-per-term Josephine Glasspole Basic School. “Each child’s case is to be considered on its own merits. The prep school environment can be very aggressive in terms of its competitiveness and not every child is going to be happy there.”

The 26-year-old Josephine Glasspole Basic School, which was named for the wife of former governor-general Sir Florizel Glasspole, has four teachers on staff and 70 children enrolled.

“Our teachers undergo continuous basic school teacher training every first Friday at workshops put on by the Ministry of Education” said Hibbert. “One of them is currently at the Mico Teachers’ College. There is no difference in the teaching materials and we all follow the national curriculum.

“The truth is that several issues have to be taken into consideration when selecting the best option for a child’s education and these include the cost, the child’s personality and level of learning,” she added.

According to the Planning Institute of Jamaica’s 2002 Social and Economic Survey, 13,727 students were enrolled in private preparatory schools, while the public system recorded enrollments of 119,191 students between the ages of three and five years in recognised basic schools; 6,166 in unrecognised basic schools; and 15,870 in infant schools and departments.

“People feel that because they are paying more, they are getting something exceptional, but the vast difference in cost stems from the fact that the Government subsidises the salaries of our staff, while the preparatory schools are on their own,” said Hibbert.

That’s true, according to Janice Roper, principal of the St Hugh’s Preparatory School, which charges $33,000 per term — a total of $99,000 for the year — excluding the extras.

“Eighty-five to 90 per cent of our fees pay salaries,” said Roper.

“We follow the national curriculum and in addition to the three Rs we teach Art, Spanish, Computer Skills, Music and Physical Education. Some of the extra-curricular activities like Brownie and Cub Scout clubs are free, but things like violin lessons cost extra,” she said.

Like Blake Hanna, who structured her career so she could stay at home and raise her son, Rainford ensures that her son is exposed to lots of extra-curricular activities.

“We have a group called Hibiscus Moms, not all of our members home school, but some of us do and we plan activities together. We will visit, for example, the Marine Park, the zoo, etc,” she said.

It seems cheaper on the face of it. Rainford doesn’t have to buy school uniforms, pay school fees or worry about day care fees. But it’s a huge sacrifice.

I’m a career mom. My job is to raise my children… make sure that they get the right start in life. The advantages of teaching him at home are numerous. I get to set my values — Christian values — and instill the confidence in him to stand up for those values, to have the confidence to stand for what he believes and disagree with people who hold different views,” she said.

Blake Hannah’s reasoning is similar, though more radical. For unlike Rainford, who plans to put her son in the private school system when he’s seven, and in her opinion more prepared to handle the experience, Blake Hannah shelved plans to put Makonnen in the school system at any level from very early in the game.

“I was living in Portland when I started to home school my son,” she explained. “I had to, because there were no facilities. I recognised the need to give him a start.”

She didn’t use the Abeka curriculum. Her methods were closer to the Moore method.

“Makonnen read voraciously. He liked Mythology, Egyptian legends. He was able to name the planets at a very early age. We went on trips together. Those trips facilitated geography and history lessons. When he was seven, we went to Boscobel for a vacation and he suggested that we make a film… at one point I thought he’d be a filmmaker, then he began to demonstrate an interest in computers. Leggo was his most important game until age 14. He’d sit with the computer repairman and watch.”

Efforts to enroll Makonnen into private schools ended unceremoniously when a teacher slapped him for asking how she knew that Jesus was a white man.

His mother recalls. “It was the closest I came to murder.”

Another prominent preparatory school was very impressed with the articulate child and ready to take him. They wanted to know if his mother planned to trim the locks he wears as a testament to his Rastafarian faith.

“The Jews and Chinese aren’t required to cut their hair. Why should my son have to cut his?” asked Blake Hannah. “Why should I send my son to school to sit in front of a teacher who doesn’t like the fact that he is black and who resents the fact that he can think independently? Why does he need to sit exams? What is a degree? His education cannot be defined by an institution. One can never stop learning, education is a continuous thing.”

So she continued the job she started at the outset and soon enough Makonnen’s brilliance began to attract attention.

At the age of 13, Technology Minister Phillip Paulwell appointed him Youth Technology Consultant after seeing what he could do with the computer.

He’s the business manager of MultiCast Entertainment, a young Jamaican music production company that aims to make it big on the local and international scenes.

He has impressed international audiences with power point presentations on aspects of computer technology and currently sits on several committees, including the United Nations Development Programme steering committee for the Caribbean Digital Diaspora Initiative.

Despite his voluminous responsibilities, however, he remains a charming, modest youngster whose primary ambition is to make his contribution to Jamaica’s development through the use of technology, and make his mother proud.

“I just want to help develop education through the use of technology… to make my contribution…” he told the Sunday Observer. “I know that would make my mummy proud, and she’s a really nice mummy…”