THE EDITOR, Sir:EDUCATION COULD be defined as the formal and informal processes by which an individual takes on the skills and knowledge necessary for them to contribute to the development and maintenance of their own society; the formal having to do with the school system, and the informal all other learning - at home, on the corner, in the rum bar or even on the bus in a taxi or even at the market.
Against that background, do we know how many lawyers, teachers of science and mathematics, carpenters, nurses, masons or doctors we need by the year 2010 and beyond? Is there any forward thinking on which to base our formal educational planning? The education system has no aim and objective that states in clear and simple language the necessity of an education system that every Jamaican can log on to. An example of this, would be "to educate that we will be able to create a true Jamaican who will be free to contribute in a meaningful and productive way to national development a more comfortable, prosperous and democratic society for all". Instead, what the education system is producing is a set of intellectually bankrupt, poverty-stricken, doctoral, bachelors', masters', parasitic misfits and criminals who cannot find or create meaningful jobs for themselves or anyone else.
The result is that in a deteriorating socio-economic environment, murderers continue to provide thriving jobs for undertakers and funeral organisers, the sale and use of embalming fluids, guns and gunshots with the only part of that business left to be developed is a market for the export of dead bodies and duppies (ghosts).
An education system that does not have clear objectives, is bound to collapse like the portion of that 138-year old Rusea's High School in Hanover, recently, and at best, fuel a brain drain because if you train persons for which we cannot find productive use, some other country will take them and there goes millions of tax dollars down the drain, a donation to some other economy. That task force on education is a good start. We must rewind and come again if our over 40 years as an independent nation is to have real sovereign meaning.
I am, etc.,
MICHAEL SPENCE
Micspen2@hotmail.com
P.O. Box 630
Liguanea, Kingston 6
