Arnold Bertram | Jamaica’s fall into the low-tech trap

As the discussion as to how Jamaica can get out of the low-tech trap proceeds, it’s important to understand how we got here. The journey with the tech advances in the 1950s, which unfortunately were followed by neglect and abandonment thereafter.

THE 1957 REFORMS

Serious efforts to reform education in Jamaica date back to the Norman Manley pre-Independence regime. The centrepiece of the 1957 Reform of Education initiated by the Norman Manley administration is perceived as the introduction of the Common Entrance Examination as the basis for the award of 2,000 free places annually to the existing high schools. This major advance in access to high school education was enthusiastically welcomed by parents who for the first time had their talented children enrolled in high schools.

Prior to the 1957 reforms, the British Colonial Government had established the High Schools Commission in 1879 to provide high school education solely for the planter/merchant class who could no longer afford to send their progeny to English schools or import English tutors. The commission established the first eleven high schools with an enrolment of 938 students out of a population of 580,000. On the eve of the 1957 reforms, high school enrolment had only reached 11,600 while the population had increased to 1,586,411.

Despite our tendency to celebrate only the 2,000 free places, however, a more transformative feature of the 1957 reforms was the foundation laid to upgrade the technological capacity of the labour force. The critical institution to achieve this objective was the establishment of the Jamaica Institute of Technology which was opened in 1958 and incorporated in 1959 as the College of Arts, Science and Technology (CAST). India was the only developing country to establish an Institute of Technology before Jamaica, and our Jamaica Institute (CAST) was obviously influenced by this Indian example.

However, while India was an independent state and Jawaharlal Nehru was prime minister when he established the Indian Institute of Technology in 1950, Jamaica was still a British colony in 1958. Not only that, the far-reaching nature of Norman Manley’s vision isn’t appreciated. In 1958, Jamaica did not even have self-government. Norman Manley’s title was ‘chief minister’. In 1959 he became ‘premier’. The most important prime minister which Jamaica never had!

As part of the institutional framework for technological advance, the Kingston Technical School was upgraded to become the Kingston Technical High School. Then in 1961 Dinthill, Holmwood and Vere practical training centres were converted to become technical high schools and two new technical high schools, St Elizabeth and St Andrew, were opened. The intention was for the graduates of all five institutions to automatically feed into CAST. The reforms also provided for the award of 50 scholarships annually for teachers as well as the recruit of graduate teachers from overseas.

The expansion of the technical capacity of the Jamaican labour force to meet the increasing demands of industrialisation was critical at a time when migration to Britain had robbed Jamaica of the skills required in the manufacturing sector and for the processing of alumina. Between 1955 and 1958, a total of 58,946 Jamaicans had migrated to Britain in response to the need for labour in British transport services and industry. The research of the late Don Mills showed that it was the more skilled parts of the labour force which migrated to the UK.

It is important to note that the 1957 reforms were implemented, not to initiate but to sustain economic growth. During the decade 1949-1959 Jamaica added three new sectors to the economy – mining, manufacturing and tourism. Annual average GDP growth was over seven per cent and the 14.1 per cent recorded for 1957 is yet to be exceeded.

PLATFORM FOR TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCE

The institutional framework established by the 1957 reforms also enhanced Jamaica’s platform for technological advance. This platform had its origins in the establishment of the Faculty of Natural Science at the Mona Campus of the University College of the West Indies (UCWI) in 1949. In this, the Departments of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics were not only important institutions for research and teaching, but for supplying high school teachers as well.

An important addition to this platform was the Scientific Research Council opened in 1960. At the opening, Norman Manley made it clear that the council was expected “to draw upon the best scientific brains of the country, to keep under constant examination and review all the research work that is now going on in Jamaica: and itself to project researches in specialised fields, the value of which and priorities of which the council itself will assess”. The opening of the Faculty of Engineering at St Augustine in Trinidad in 1962 completed the institutional framework for Jamaica’s technological advance.

POLITICS TRUMPS DEVELOPMENT

A golden opportunity presented itself for Jamaica to build on this platform for technological advance when in 1966 the Government of Jamaica signed a loan agreement with the World Bank in the sum of US$9.5m. Prior to this the total capital investment in secondary education between 1952 and 1966 was US$4.9m.The loan was spent on constructing and equipping 50 junior secondary schools and 40 primary schools. Enrolment at the four teacher-training colleges was to be expanded; while some 890 places were to be added to CAST and 330 places to the Jamaica School of Agriculture.

Unfortunately, not one dollar was invested in technological research. The Scientific Research Council is not mentioned, neither is the Centre of Agricultural Research, despite the path-breaking research of T.P. Lecky who developed the Jamaica Hope breed of dairy cattle as well as the Jamaica Red, Black and Brahman cattle. In the first decade of independence access to high school education more so than technological advance became the priority of successive administrations of both political parties.

RETURN TO GLOBALISED FREE MARKET ECONOMY

Between 1973 and 1977, the post-war consensus was replaced by a globalised free market. Given the low level of technology no sector of the Jamaican economy was able to produce competitive goods and services. However, even as Jamaica’s spectacular GDP growth was sustained in the first decade of independence, this was largely as a result of the expansion of the alumina sector without any real technological transformation of the economy. As our garment sector collapsed under pressure of global competition, Jamaica was already becoming a classic case of ‘growth without development’. We were well on our way into the low-tech trap.

Fifty years after the 1967 “New Deal for Education” only eight of the 118 high schools listed as ‘non-traditional’ had cohorts of 50 per cent and over passing five subjects or more, including maths and English, in the CSEC examinations. This group includes all of the 13 technical high schools. Only two had cohorts of 50 per cent or more passing five or more subjects, including maths and English. The Norman Manley dream of a system of technical high schools feeding into UTech and overseen by the Scientific Research Council fell by the wayside. His vision of a set of institutions which would be a cradle for research and technological innovation was abandoned. Instead this dream has been replaced by the nightmare of low educational performance and a breeding ground for crime and antisocial behaviour. In this low-tech, low-wage environment the best migrate and the rest choose between competing for low-wage jobs, or taking the risks associated with a life of crime.

- Arnold Bertram is a historian and former minister of government. Send feedback to redev.atb@gmail.com or columns@gleanerjm.com