EDWIN Allen was a great innovator and 50 years ago the defining issue was access to secondary education. Our name-brand high schools were excellent but few. They were open to all but inaccessible to most. Students were vetted – good family? Bright? Teachers were unmarried, groomed, authority in look, word and handy with a strap. “Psychiatrist”, “psychologist” or “therapy” were words in a dictionary or known only at Bellevue. School prepared a child for life-reward and punishment, joy and sorrow, pass and fail – equal in opportunity but master of his destiny. Same start but only one winner; if you lost, don’t whinge, get over it! The weather had “depressions”, not people, a bully was a reason to get fit, not bawl; and the threat of a “washout” (to cadets, a “pull through”, as to clean a rifle barrel) cured bad behaviour. A child was habilitated to the rules for living, manners, confidence and “sportsmanship”. After, he worked, loved his school, rough though it was and would die if his kids could not get a place there.

Poor kids did not attend George’s, JC, Wolmer’s or KC but knew their sports and exam scores. They wore the colours to Champs, Manning Cup and rooted fiercely for their favourite – the “good old days” of primary school for the poor, secondary for the rich, each knew his station and God was cool with that. Then, along came Edwin Allen!

Minister Allen was a teacher. A Frankfield farmer, he came to town with the absurd notion that poor kids could pass the Cambridge exams, just like rich ones; set out to prove it and he did! The “guinea pigs” in his experimental class is the reason we now have many high schools as he undermined the “two Jamaicas”. Later, Michael Manley rent our apartheid fabric and an avalanche of opportunity in education and society ensued. Young executives, these quiet revolutions got you where you are today! It’s payback time! What will you do for the poor and disadvantaged?

Minister Allen’s “secondary class” (30 in a class) in the bowels of a few primary schools for five years, taught by primary teachers in ill-equipped rooms, broke records in the Senior Cambridge and GCE exams and every pupil took 10 subjects at once, not “one-one” as now. Allen was jubilant, yet this was heresy to many, but as the exams were set and marked in the UK – end of argument! It was a risky project, yet he and Ministry of Education officers put their careers on the line for the greater good! He again made history when he crossed the House to hail Michael Manley’s education revolution. Sadly, our criteria for national hero is based on riot and badness, not on the value people add to our independent nation! Allen’s legacy is understated or unknown and we are poorer for it!

Today, education faces another crisis. The defining issue is quality. The more we put in the less we get out! It consumes most money yet produces the worst results. More money, schools, teachers, more parents’ input produce more illiteracy! The healthy fear is gone; we adjust syllabus, exams, pay teachers more yet we have a tsunami of mis-education, antisocial behaviour and illiteracy. English is a fourth language in India, yet our trade partners send offshore work there or to the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic. Why? Take out the middle class, and we do not have 200,000 people who are proficient in English, maths and reasoning so essential in a modern workforce. Basic literacy is not enough. China’s planned assembly plant here is politics not economics. Minister Samuda knows we were weaned off screwdriver industry by Mr Lightbourne long ago – CMT, call centre, freezone, 807 were here and left – many to far-off, non-English-speaking India and China! What has changed since then?

Minister Holness is a beneficiary of the Allen/Manley revolution. What will he do? Minister Samuda, please tell him the unambitious 100 per cent literacy in “Vision 2030” will keep us poor forever. Will the world pause for us to catch up? No! Why wait 20 more years for just literacy? No way! Let us ramp-up to a competency-based, school-leaving diploma (SLD) for adults over 14 years and target 90 per cent to be certified by 2030 and business will come. Minister Holness must now consider Google content as the base for our primary schooling and this national SLD. Minister, here’s the thing:

As the “organiser of the world’s information” Google’s content (properly moderated) can replace school books. Primary schooling expands a child’s mental, social, motor skills and content. Guided internet learning, plus PE – sound mind, sound body – oral, practical and written pupil work can do this, as in the 6 to12 age group the convergence of material/content and media/computers is oxygen to a child’s. He loves it!

Minister, ask MPs, journalists, businessmen, teachers of the books read, plays seen, field research done in the last 12 months – not much. But who used Google? Everyone! You need a team to design a project to use guided Google content, in one experimental class of 30 six-year-olds, with one computer for every two pupils, in 20 schools for five years. Firms will donate computers, broadband and maintenance. The pupils will track the usual curricula using teacher-paced Google and internet content from age 6 to 11, sit the same exams as their peers and we compare results. This project needs a small team of teaching and ICT facilitators, support manuals and to track, service and audit the circuit of classes. Should we make the curricula and exams pupil-paced, then by age nine, most will have covered the 11-plus content and exams – the magic of open-entry, open-exit internet learning and the child. The problem will be to get him off the computer to interact and do some PE. Just imagine, forcing him or her to go out to play! This is true transformation!

The impact on primary education can be dramatic. It drives down cost-per-student, the budget, books and drives up quality. Competency-based oral, practical and written exams can now be used nationally. No more trick exams, the child now has to demonstrate he knows the stuff, but at his own pace. Bye, bye homework and extra lessons as education is now a continuous flow whether in “class” or out! Stay conscious, my friend!

Dr Franklin Johnston is an international project manager with Teape-Johnston Consultants currently on assignment in the UK.

franklinjohnston@hotmail.com