W. Val Chambers, Contributor

The dictionary definition of 'maverick' is "a person who takes an independent stand, as in politics, refusing to conform to that of his party or group." So when Martin Henry called me "a maverick educator" in his newspaper column, I should be either honoured or condemned. In Jamaica I have often been condemned.

I met Martin only once in the flesh, at a famous conference put on by Gloria Knight. As Martin remembered it, I leaned over to him and noted that the Israeli presenters were speaking a language different from ours, (meaning they had a completely different world view). Martin translated what I said into Jamaican patois, which I haven't spoken since my first year of high school.

That conference was something else. Mrs. Knight, a respected civil servant, had invited all the people with any reputation in education, and the maverick came, like the 'satan' in the story of Job. I was not invited to say anything, but the chief gurus were Professors Rex Nettleford and Errol Miller who spoke as they had always spoken, and Mrs Knight's report in the press mentioned that the conference was a great success, so successful that those two standard bearers were there.

Traditional speakers

I had gone to the conference hoping that we were going to discuss new departures, but the traditional speakers on the agenda indicated that mavericks were only invited to lend legitimacy to the status quo. But I did not remain silent throughout the ordeal. The head of computer science at UWI at the time told the conference that 50 per cent of students failed the subject at Mona, 75 per cent at Cave Hill - because our students did not have reasoning skills. I thought that was nonsense, but I couldn't say so at such a respectable gathering. How could you be teaching the brightest students in the country and failing half of them?

I had a big problem on my hands. How could I tell the professor, who was incidentally from Holland, that he was talking garbage, without being decapitated by the Jamaican crowd that was overwhelmingly UWI graduates?

I decided to beat around the bush. "How many fail in your country?" I asked him, a little aggressively. I don't remember what he said, but I got the impression he didn't like the question. The report on the conference showed that my intervention was not understood - which shows that the bush remains when you beat around it.

In Jamaica it is easy to be a maverick. If you read you are going to be a maverick, for you will be living in a different world from the people around you. It seems that Jamaicans simply don't 'have the time,' as a friend of mine keeps saying. It is frightening to contemplate: that virtually all Jamaicans read nothing at all - except notices, invoices and a few advertisements. Some, including the 'educated' ones, read the latest scandals, but nothing to fortify their minds.

Sociological sense

Peter Espeut has been writing sociological sense for the last 16 or so years, but politicians and the Ministry of Education don't seem to read what he has been saying. One advisor to a minister of education got a first degree only after several tries. Another advisor failed at UWI but still kept the university in his resume. Still another once told me he hadn't read the great educational thinkers and didn't know the latest trends abroad. The most respected educationist in the island once wrote in a newspaper article that trying to educate everyone at the high school level is a bad idea. That did not stop him from getting a high national honour.

In the recent presidential election both John McCain and Barack Obama promised to make university education more available - apparently for everyone. What does a Jamaican make of that? One Cabinet minister in the previous administration told me he couldn't accept university scholarships for his constituency because he was concentrating on secondary education. Would Martin Henry think of him as a maverick?

W. Val Chambers, Chambers_education@yahoo.com.