Dear Editor,

While I advocate more restrained, calculated, and measured language when our public officials speak, I do not disagree with the quintessence of the articulation by the Minister of Education Ronald Thwaites when he postulated that parents should not “send leggo beasts to our schools and expect us to make the difference”.

The education system is replete with children being fathered and mothered by lumpens, who have no business bringing children into this world. We continue to be persuaded by this delusional argument that the education process should lend credence to the theory that some children are afflicted with behavioural challenges, occasioned by their difficult antecedents. Well, mother and father who, through their lunacy, continuously bring children into a situation of generational poverty and misfortune cannot expect the State education process to transform them. Let the bleeding hearts go establish the transformational systems to address that problem. And while they are at it, they can educate the parents on the true meaning of family planning — not birth control.

The purpose of the formal education process is to equip its participants to think critically through the process of analysing concepts. This is the reason the argument for performance-based pay for teachers in Jamaica is redundant, ill-advised, and thoughtless. How do we expect educators to specialise in mathematics, English language and science, while using the majority of their time in the classroom undertaking remedial training with demented children, all while their misguided parents get let off the hook to create further madness?

The Opposition spokesperson on education generally represents a refreshing hope for the future of the legislature and the executive — notwithstanding, the characteristic delusional and thoughtless positions of the Opposition leader — but her call for the minister to apologise smacks of expedient piffle. For, where were these calls a few weeks ago when a senior legislator, representing the Opposition, was abusing and disparaging media representatives and, in the process, debasing our legislature and governance apparatus?

Mark A Hylton

Montego Bay, St James

markahylton@yahoo.com