Pythagoras posited that, “A fool is known by his speech, while a wise man by his silence.” Perhaps this is the reason we are faced with the continued disparity in Jamaica’s educational landscape.

The gap has not narrowed significantly over the years and we still see our colonial type of peasantry exacerbated from the last 100 years. While leadership changes over time, the concept of that dynamism in education is not readily discerned because the permanent changes in our behaviours have not been seen nor has it been acknowledged by the masses of the population, and was perhaps kept that way to maintain or retain that viscous line of demarcation that has kept us in abject poverty over the years.

In 2020, reports from the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (Statin) showed that just about five per cent of adults in Jamaica accessed tertiary level education amidst the standards set by societies in the world.

Eric Hoffman wrote: “In times of rapid changes the learners will inherit the Earth and prosper; meanwhile, the learned will live a polished life that no longer exists.” Hence, the necessity to clearly do whatever is necessary to dissect the status quo and make meaningful decisions that will impact the ever-changing world in which we live.

A lot of Jamaica’s educational pedagogies and ideologies were handed down by our very colonial masters and are heavily embedded in classism, racism, sexism, and religious doctrines; hence, decisions and rationales are skewed based on those sets of beliefs.

There is a school of thoughts that says the road to destruction is laden with great intentions and, as such, try as we might to correct it, our educational pyramid is skewed (inverted) in the Third World, and those people at the top who presumably boast of being the most powerful stakeholders should be placed at the base of the pyramid and those at the base be propelled up top.

Influencing and changing our people’s minds and ways of thinking are the most difficult tasks, as we are a nation that once we are set in a way of thinking and being we become slaves to the system. Education in Jamaica has not evolved and this article aims to highlight the ways in which we can work cohesively through consultations and advocacy with all stakeholders to make the educational experience more robust and transitions in the sector can be smoother amidst the current crisis we are experiencing.

INFRASTRUCTURE

Venezuela has been thrown into anarchy because of the civil unrest over the legitimacy of its president; however, in 2005, as a member of Jamaica’s team to the World Federation of Youth and Students, I was privy to travel to that South American empire. Venezuelans live an average life in an oil-rich country that had a literacy rate of 90 per cent at that time. Each family had to volunteer one family member to serve in the army and tertiary education was funded totally by the Government (read free of charge).

Most of Jamaica’s educational institutions, especially at the primary level, have been in a state disrepair and has got worse since the passage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers’ desks, chairs, tables, old-worn chalkboards may have been in these institutions since the 1990s and school leaders continue to grapple with the Ministry of Education and Youth to acquire grant funding that can effect any repairs of significance to these plants. There are numerous schools that have classrooms that are separated by termite-infested chalkboards and has ceiling beds falling off the zinc panels.

On my trek in Venezuela over 20 years ago I was bewildered to see schools that were well-designed and ventilated like modern-day hotels. All schools that I visited were fully enclosed for safety and security and each school was equipped with rainwater harvesting facilities as Venezuela’s underground water system is said to be contaminated by crude oil and gas. All the schools I went to were fully wired with different voltages of electricity and, although we were not in the cellphone era, telephone boxes were attached to each school in the entry hallway.

Today we still have schools that are without regular and paid-up electricity and telephone services, and some without consistent supply of water, which is the most precious of commodities. By the way, there were about 5 per cent of rural primary schools with pit latrines in 2020. If we want to venture further into the virtual space, there are still 35 per cent of schools yet to be equipped with paid up Internet access, and there are still schools who cannot support cellular phone usage from any of the main service providers — an outright atrocity in the 21st century.

The conditions under which our teachers work are the very conditions under which all our students learn, and so, let us not reciprocate our priorities one over the other. Researches have shown the when classroom conditions are ideal and children are comfortable, and when teaching conditions are good and teachers are happy, the quality of output is heightened exponentially.

The unnecessary and sometimes inimical and idiotic red tapes that constantly bombards Jamaica’s educational fluency have not allowed us to grow as a nation. This stymies the growth in all other sector caused by the rippled effect on the economy.

Education has no value if you fear using it, and so the man with education but fails to use it has no significant advantage over the one without. Too often our lawmakers either lack interest in education or, dare I say, lack education, and so legislative moves to get Bills passed in defence of education or education-related issues are often overlooked or debated improperly, and find little or no favour in the Houses of Parliament.

The state of being average is measured by a yardstick of mediocrity, which stops inches of excellence. The Jamaica Teaching Council (JTC) Bill, which has been in draft for some eight to 10 years still has not found favour with our lawmakers, even when it has been reviewed and revised. And as such teachers’ lives have not been impacted with any great measure.

Other issues like the time teachers take to be compensated after being employed into the sector or to be remunerated after taking a course upgrade can be tedious and overburdening on not just the pockets but on the teachers’ mental health. The process sometimes drives our ‘better’ teachers to other more fruitful jurisdictions, all because of the bureaucracy and red tape that constantly bombard us of our very own making. Clearly it cannot be that a person acting as a principal takes two years to be appointed or a teacher who upgrades his/her qualification takes two years to be paid for that qualification.

Bureaucracy also spills over into our many battles to lead our union, wherein we have four different bargaining units in one sector (JTA, JAPPS, APPS, APSP), each with dissenting views representing their own subgroup.

This is politics at the highest and is a chapter in its own, where all men are equal but some men are more equal than others. This requires further examination.

In all this, who suffers, the children, and by extension the nation’s future.

Godfrey E Drummond is a senior teacher at Petersfield Primary School in Westmoreland. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or godfreydummon41@gmail.com

Godfrey E Drummond