TWO anecdotes will appropriately introduce the subject of this article.

Back in 1956, when I was in third class at Alpha Primary School, there was a “Rediffusion” box installed in the classroom through an arrangement with RJR (the acronym RJR stands for Radio Jamaica and Rediffusion). On certain days of the week the class was brought to attention at 10:00 am to receive an audio lesson prepared by the Government Information Service in conjunction with the Ministry of Education.

The lessons were of only 15 minutes duration and dealt with English language and arithmetic. There were drawbacks because the technology was primitive. The sound volume was low and the acoustics sometimes caused you not to hear clearly what was being transmitted. It was not interactive and there was no way of stopping and rewinding if you missed something, but I found it helpful and interesting.

Decades later, with the advent of the Internet, someone I know obtained his law degree from a university in England through interactive online classes. As part of the requirement for qualification he had to travel to England to attend a minimum number of “dinners” at the Inns of Court — a kind of ritual that I am told has since been modified.

Of course, distance learning is not new. As a child growing up, I recall frequent advertisements in the Daily Gleaner by Bennett’s College in Sheffield, England, offering correspondence courses in various disciplines. Back then lessons and responses were sent by mail. Many Jamaicans availed themselves of the opportunity and one I knew went on to become the chief engineer at the Jamaica Public Service Company.

The novel coronavirus pandemic and the disruption of face-to-face learning have forced us to implement online classes for our schoolchildren to enable them to learn from home. My grandson is a student at Ardenne High School, which runs an excellent programme, and he has done very well with it. But, for a variety of reasons, the overall results have been far from adequate.

The digital infrastructure to facilitate reliable transmission to households in every nook and cranny of Jamaica is not there. Not many families could afford or were afforded a tablet for each child to participate. It was simply not possible, given the crisis that has been upon us, to properly organise the lesson content and delivery and properly assess student assimilation and response. Perhaps, most importantly, the required supervision at home was weak and in many cases non-existent. Parents had to go to work or had important chores to do. Left on their own, children’s attention wanders uncontrollably.

Online learning from home can never measure up to the benefits of face-to-face learning, especially for young children who are not yet capable of self-discipline. In addition, the classroom is a place for not only lesson delivery but also behavioural training and personality development.

However, online learning is a critical tool that can address some of the serious deficiencies in our education system. Many schools, especially those in deep rural areas and poor inner-city communities, have great difficulty in attracting good teachers. The success of schools like Campion College and Immaculate High School is due, in large part, to the quality of teachers they are able to recruit. We are also woefully short of specialist teachers in mathematics and the sciences, and many schools are forced to make do with the skill sets that they have to support these subject areas.

The classroom environment, therefore, is much determined by the competence and experience of the teacher who stands in front of the class and the effectiveness with which he or she imparts knowledge and manages lesson delivery. The quality of that performance will inevitably fluctuate widely from classroom to classroom.

Technology provides a fix. Let us envisage a situation where every classroom throughout Jamaica — primary and secondary — is equipped with audio-visual equipment and linked to the Internet. Let us envisage further that lessons in each subject area are prepared by the best teachers we have and can be downloaded at the click of a button to every classroom. Let us envisage a teacher standing in front of the class with a remote in hand, able to put the transmission on pause, explain and clarify, interact with the students to assess the extent to which they understand what has been presented, rewind if necessary, and go over it again.

What this would do is enable the students in poor and rural communities to receive the same quality of lessons that are being offered at Campion and Immaculate. Supervision, behavioural training and personality development would not be compromised because the teacher is there and in control of the class. It would not require every child to have a tablet or every home to have Internet connection.

We did not need the pandemic to demonstrate the value of technology in improving our education system, but it has — in a most dramatic way. We should grasp this lesson and utilise it.

Bruce Golding served as Jamaica’s eighth prime minister from September 11, 2007 to October 23, 2011.