JAMAICA has to grapple with many complex problems for which there are no easy solutions. These include a trilliondollar debt, which represents in the region of 140 per cent of our gross domestic product; corruption and crime, poor housing, etc. We are going to have to bite the bullet and make some hard decisions if we are to emerge from this quagmire, this morass of problems, stronger, and without chaos and mayhem.

This is going to involve sacrifice and hardship. Since nobody readily gives up the known for the unknown, or pleasure, convenience, comfort and money for pain and suffering, our citizens must be forced to collaborate either willingly or otherwise. We would all prefer willing collaboration, but certain conditions need to be met if that is to happen.

Firstly, we must lift the level of understanding of our people; the shroud of ignorance which covers our land must be removed. Albert Einstein taught that “all things are created twice. There is a mental or first creation and a physical or second creation”. He also stated: “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”

These sayings imply that people must first understand the problems and the situation and then change their way (level) of thinking if the problems are going to be resolved. This points us clearly to the critical role that thinking, understanding and creativity play in solving our problems and the pride of place, the primacy of education and socialisation in the training of ordinary citizens as well as our leaders.

The benefits of education and socialisation are not immediately seen, are long-term, but if we continue to disregard their fundamental importance we will continue to lurch from crisis to crisis and be perpetually bogged down in a morass of confusion.

Secondly, the people must trust the powers that be. They must trust the leaders — political, business, educational, etc. They must trust the systems in place to deliver with justice and equity. As Peter Tosh declared, “I don’t want no peace, I need equal rights and justice”.

Our systems must be declared, transparent, consistent and equitable, especially with our history, where we are accustomed to the system being “gainst wi”, and where we are accustomed to beating the system to have a chance — “a no nuttin”, anancyism, hustle, blyism, etc. We must cut back, as far as possible, on discretionary powers which facilitate the granting of corrupt favours.

The serious trust deficit that now exists between the people and their leaders — where the leaders are perceived as saying one thing and doing another — must be bridged. No society is governable without trust. This again stresses the importance of strengthening our socialisation and educational institutions, eg the family and the schools, from whence come our citizens, leaders, et al.

This, again, points to the fact that education and socialisation, which inculcate the principles, values and attitudes that the society desires to promulgate, must be clearly priority number one.

Jamaica must cease the hypocrisy which is now associated with our education system, if we are going to realise our often stated objective to educate all our children, as quickly as possible. We need to unambiguously define our problems if we are going to have a chance of solving them.

We must, for instance, clearly state and understand that our schools are not equal. Our declared competitive academic system of space allocation in high schools recognises that our high schools are not of the same academic level. However, when it suits them, so often, we hear from principals, teachers and others in the hierarchy of our education system that all our high schools are high schools, the implication being that students can move smoothly from one to the other.

This is often said when a high school wants to import, recruit, bring in a sports star from one school to another of higher academic standing, ie to use a sports standard to move a student up an academic scale. Given our many serious educational problems, we fiddle while Rome burns.

Jamaica must make up its mind. If we are uncomfortable with the current system, let us change it; but let us have a system that is declared, transparent, consistent, and equitable up to the high-school level. We cannot have some children being required to go through a gruelling, traumatic entrance exam, while others don’t have to, although not representing exceptional hardship cases.

We cannot have double standards where our poor, struggling, young citizens are excluded based on sports standards for which they were not tested and then, unethically even, lie in a bid to obfuscate and cover up what we have done. We are sending warped messages to our youngsters, demotivating them and encouraging them to beat the system.

Other countries of note, having a system similar to ours where those getting the highest marks on an entrance exam go to the best schools, have no problem celebrating that, since they are clear as to what is their top priority— academic/technical education. We seem to be ambivalent.

While other countries, although giving due consideration to the humanities, have their schools focusing even more acutely on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM subjects) in this decidedly knowledge-based world economy, we seem to be more concerned with our schools acting as sports academies or sports clubs.

The hypocrisy extends to how we treat with the schools at the highest rungs of our academic scale, eg Campion College and Immaculate Conception High School. Significantly, although we declare that space in our high schools is allocated on a competitive academic basis, and is determined by performance and preference, we grudgingly tolerate, eg, Campion and Immaculate, for having, by and large, the students who get the highest marks in our entrance exams.

It seems we downplay their academic successes, generally keeping them off-balance, on the back foot, apologetic, while lauding and celebrating the sport successes of schools like Kingston College, Jamaica College, St George’s College, Calabar High, Holmwood Technical, etc.

Instead of ensuring and encouraging the efficient use of our scarce academic/technical resources by supporting, praising, extolling the accomplishments and virtues of our “rocket scientist” schools, we would undermine and denigrate them by elevating mediocrity and suggesting that they put in place remedial classes to facilitate the recruiting, bringing in of sports stars who don’t qualify to be in the school on a competitive, academic/technical basis.

We must change our thinking. We must accept the role of sports in high school as an auxiliary teaching tool, to help inculcate the required values of the society. Clubs and other sports institutions must develop sports talent to its full potential.

We get the best of what we celebrate. Let us celebrate education. Let us unequivocally celebrate the academic achievements of our high-performance schools, as well as the tremendous work being done by many of the less endowed schools, and encourage and assist them to be the best.

Let us make education the story Jamaica tells about itself so that we may more quickly, as others have done, enjoy the economic and social benefits of such a paradigm shift in our thinking and culture.

— Dr Lascelve ‘Muggy’ Graham is a chemist and former Jamaica football captain