By JACQUELINE CHAMPIER

AS a young girl, I would sit on my verandah in the country and eagerly wait to see the students from a nearby primary school as they passed by on their way home each evening. Each day I would try to figure out the meaning of the motto in bold letters on the back of their T-shirts, because although I was too young to comprehend those words, and although the students could not explain them to me, I felt somehow that those words were profound.

Each day, I would try to analyse that one sentence ‘Not for school but for life we learn’.

Many years have passed since then, and I eventually figured out the meaning of those words. Indeed, until we understand the aim and purpose of education, we will never reap the real benefits of education.

If you are one of those persons who believe that education is mostly to help you to secure a good job or to help you to live a better quality of life, then I regret to inform you that your thinking is skewed because the aim of education is not for selfish pursuits.

One famous author postulated that, “our ideas of education take too narrow and too low a range; there is need for a broader scope a higher aim. True education is more than the persuing of a certain course of study; it has to do with the whole period of existence possible to man. It is the harmonious development of the physical, the mental and the spiritual powers”.

Too often we teach students only to memorise information and so our students learn to cram, without the ability to analyse, synthesise or evaluate. This makes them reflectors of other men’s thoughts instead of critical thinkers who are needed in Jamaica, if we are to move Jamaica forward.

Why hasn’t our education helped to raise the bar a little higher in our nation? I am often forced to ask this question. What is the purpose of our education if it does not transform? I stand corrected, but I believe that although not all of us, we will continue to borrow; to live in poverty; to tear down each other; to fight against the course of justice; to indulge in bribery; to call wrong right; to put the innocent in prison; to set the guilty free; to rape our grandmothers; to rob and aggravate with intent; to worship our idols; to murder our senior citizens; to shoot our little children and to use our violence to scare away investors and returning residents from our shores if we do not learn the value of true education.

True education is not solely about reading, writing and arithmetic. It is not about passing 10 subjects in high school. It is not about graduating from college and having several letters behind your name. It is not about having a great career or about building the biggest house in your community. True wisdom or true education begins with knowing who God is, for the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

I believe in Jamaica, and I believe the saying that there is nothing wrong with Jamaica than cannot be right with Jamaica, and that is why I am proposing that the first step in fixing Jamaica is to be deliberate in educating our children not just for now but also for eternity because the truth is that education is not for school but for life we learn.