Education continues to be hotly debated in our society, and rightly so. More than ever there is great concern over the ability of our education system to provide our young people with the knowledge, skills, and abilities that will enable them to function effectively in a society that is becoming more complex and competitive.

None can deny the pivotal role that education plays in national development, and the need for a properly designed and managed system that is capable of training our children for the varied needs of the Jamaican society. The challenges are many — from a flawed method of compensating our teachers to insufficient levels of corporate support for education, an increasingly undisciplined and lawless society, and a number of dysfunctional and self-defeating attitudes and behaviours.

Performance Pay

Anyone who has operated a business understands that the greatest productivity is achieved when rewards are based on performance. I have always been firm in my support for a performance-based programme for teachers as opposed to guaranteed pay. Performance-based pay would give administrators the ability to reward teachers they consider to be performing well, while at the same time discourage poor performance.

Currently, public school teachers are paid on a scale that is typically based upon years of service and educational background, which is unfair to those teachers who are, in fact, working harder and getting better results than others. The teaching profession is one of only a few professions in which there is little monetary reward for excellence. And we will never attract outstanding individuals to the profession until we provide them with some sort of monetary reward for success. We must also encourage the Government and corporate companies to set up partnerships with schools and invest more in education, especially at the early childhood level where it is needed most.

As businessman Michael Lee Chin says, “We who are more fortunate have a responsibility to inspire, motivate, and give back. Giving, too, makes great business sense as when you create wealth for a cause, the cause will give back to you.”

We all need to recognise that schools are the “agents of change and community regeneration” and so our principal goal, if we want to succeed as a nation, must be educate, educate, educate. Children do not have equal opportunities in life until they have equal opportunities in education. It is not enough to build good schools, we must also create an environment in which children can build cultural awareness, language skills, etc.

A Learning Environment

Government, in turn, needs to provide an environment for more job creation so that graduating students are not left out in the cold or made to feel that they have no choice but to resort to undesired alternatives, such as drugs and crime, which are seriously affecting the country’s ability to succeed. Without crime and violence, we will have much greater investment from foreigners, which will bring “new” money into Jamaica and eliminate our need to continue borrowing. The end result will be greater wealth creation, and therefore, more jobs and much better living standards for all.

Challenges

We must encourage parents and communities in general to have a higher commitment to education, to volunteer where necessary, and to pay more attention to their children who need a happy home life in order to achieve their best in school.

Discipline, love, and values are all essential ingredients for raising productive children, and these ingredients are conspicuously missing in the inner-city communities and schools. Each child needs proper mentoring outside of schools as well in order to be successful. In order to create better inner-city education, the parents and community need to become more involved.

We are all in agreement that there are many challenges facing education and our society in general. I have merely touched on a few of these challenges. Those of us who care about our young people and about our own future, both as individuals and as a society, must continue to highlight and debate these issues — not in a contentious manner that creates division and bitterness, but in a frank and constructive manner where consensus is reached and solutions found and implemented. If we believe that this is too idealistic a goal, then we accept defeat before we even start.

A society that is concerned with its own future must find the will and the way to make education its number one priority. This is the challenge of our generation, a challenge for you, me — all of us. Do we have the will to meet this challenge, or do we walk away in utter defeat and indifference?

The problems in education were largely created by our generation. The challenge, therefore, falls on us to correct them. It’s not a matter of choice. It’s a matter of dire necessity.

Bruce Bicknell is chairman of the Seaward Primary and Junior High School Board