MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Arguing that education is the only legitimate means of upward social mobility, education minister Ronald Thwaites wants churches to become more proactive in seeking to improve behaviour and attitudes in schools.

“This year the Ministry of Education calls upon the churches in Jamaica to take back their schools,” Thwaites told the congregation at the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) Education Week Thanksgiving Service at Mandeville New Testament Church of God, recently.

Thwaites, a Roman Catholic deacon, said churches should “become engaged in mentoring (and) in the behaviour modification that is needed for so many young people who have inadequate community impulses and family life”.

He described education as “more than the letters behind one’s name or subjects passed, but in terms of social observations — their behaviour, manners, respect for one another and spiritual consciousness….”

Thwaites lashed out at what he described as a prevalence of mediocrity in the education system, which, he suggested, led to many leaving school after 12 years of substantial public and private investment without adequate education. He appeared to suggest that under his watch, the situation would have to change.

“No more must we educate at public expense and at private sacrifice tens of thousands of children who leave school after 12 years of education… with no more than a certificate of attendance and not a subject and not a sterling character trait to their names,” he said.

“Many of our young people schooled improperly by many of us older people believe that education is not as important as it was to our foreparents after slavery… We have lost that truth and focus. It is a truth at this time that many of us have squandered the pearl of great price, the huge opportunity and the expensive option that we have for education in this land,” Thwaites said.

He argued that “restoring the value of education and riveting it in the souls of our people is going to require everyone’s participation”.

Clayton Hall, president of the JTA, said Education Week had arrived “in the midst of economic hardships, public chastisement and threats of violence”.

However, his organisation, he said, was united for the cause of education and he urged the nation to view it as the way forward.

“As we focus public attention on the role of education in developing our human resources, we call on those in authority to see investments in education as an investment in the future, recognising that any money saved from education will be expended twice over in the criminal justice system,” Hall said.