Ed McKoy, Contributor

Jamaicans, you can talk about politics and road building, cricket matches and forensics, dons and hotel construction, gun violence and light bulbs, dancehall and homosexuals all you like, but if you don't come to grips with the real problems of your schools, you're soon going to find yourselves finished as a viable nation of dynamic peoples, ignored and relegated to a backwater of the Caribbean, and a crumbling society living at the edge of total anarchy.

What is wrong with your schools today and what can be done about it? This is no doubt the single important question you all must answer. Yet, regardless of what you or any other place or country are doing today, all you've done so far to answer that question and solve the problems of your disintegrating school systems is listen to the advice of one short-sighted, self-serving, self-aggrandising, politically corrupt, so-called 'expert' after another and in the end, all your efforts have got you nowhere.

To my way of thinking, the answer to that question and the solution to those problems surely must be simpler than all that nonsense, and if I hadn't seen it for myself, not in some university lab, academic think tank, or political back room, but in the everyday world of a living, breathing school community, I wouldn't have the courage or the confidence to tell you that I know what that answer and that solution really are.

Respect lost

What is wrong with your schools today is simply that as a society you have lost your 'respect for the classroom experience' and to solve your problems you must do everything in your power to get it back and never lose it again! Real education takes place when a teacher takes control of a group in a classroom environment and offers them an experience, the experience of learning, and they accept it, sincerely and whole- heartedly. That's all it takes. You know it. I know it. And all of us should never forget that as our first educational priority!

It does not take having entertaining teachers with brilliant lectures, given to just the right number of students teaching to one side of their brain or the other. It does not take huge libraries, engrossing lessons, stimulating videos, large colour televisions or beautiful sound systems. It does not take fancy computers, the latest and greatest technologically assisted lesson plans, creative schedules, or even having enough desks, chairs and books for all the students present.

History shows us that all good education takes is having an inherent respect for the experience of learning on the part of both teacher and student and that this experience takes place in a classroom, wherever that class-room is or whatever its design or nature. Having such an inherent respect, teachers will perform at their best. Regardless of their individual talents and skills, students will learn at the fastest rate, both individually and collectively, and in time, all of the other so-called 'obstacles' to learning soon are overcome.

Today and every day from now on, Jamaica, your parents and politicians, your teachers and auxiliary staff, as well as each and every member of the community in which your schools are an integral part, must, must, must ... through living example and daily demonstration, teach every single child in your society, from the day they begin to seek to know and learn, to have an inherent, overwhelming and unchallenged respect for the learning experience of the classroom.