Dear Editor,

I am a fourth-year student attending one of Jamaica’s leading teacher-training institutions based in Mandeville. During the forced closure of the campus in March 2020 due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, we had to engage online platforms for further pedagogical deliveries.

The start of the new 2020-2021 academic year happens at a time when the novel coronavirus is in community spread, which means that our education and training will be delivered with the continued use of digital platforms.

As a student, it appears that our educators and the technocrats at the Ministry of Education have belatedly come to the realisation that the world has been redefined as a digital one, yet they continue to think in a pre-COVID-19 environment by stooping to the engagement of technology as a temporary measure. On further reflection, our education system seems disconnected from the call by the prime minister to embrace a Fourth Industrial Revolution mindset that would transform Jamaica.

It was therefore refreshing to read Dudley C McLean II column, ‘Time for a Fifth Industrial Revolution renaissance’ ( Jamaica Observer, October 2, 2020), in which he postulates that, “We, as a nation, need to revisit the delivery of education beginning with the early childhood level and at the primary levels, where our children can think critically in the digital environment.” Here, I would add that we should immediately revisit how our teachers are trained, especially students like myself, who will be graduating in 2021, to be effective in a world that has already changed.

It is my hope that teachers colleges of Jamaica would be the proactive catalyst for this change by re-engaging their educators in new educational leadership thinking and the acceptance that our world has changed, along with the need to facilitate the preparation of teachers, “to embrace a world informed by technological pedagogies of the Fifth Industrial Revolution”.

Most importantly, we should start as a country by elevating the teaching profession to reflect its importance to society.

Ricardo Spaulding

Ticky Ticky District, Manchester

spauldingricardo@gmail.com