Ronald Thwaites | Literacy the key

A human being really has an advantage in life when he or she can read, compute and behave sociably. Do we really believe that?

Low literacy is one major cause of anti-social behaviour, below useful work skills and limited scope for productivity and economic growth. A reasonable estimate is that the more than half a million Jamaicans of working age who are outside the labour market, cannot read and write well enough to function in a real job. This is also true of a third of those engaged in petty employment. In the global marketplace for workers we are trying to win the hundred meter race without legs.

AS OTHERS SEE US

It took the World Bank last week to tell us what we should have known about ourselves – that the problem of underdevelopment stems in large part from a dysfunctional education system which operates way below world standards. We have nowhere going until we fix this problem.

In the Budget now under consideration, taxpayers are investing close to $100 billion on primary and secondary schooling which is delivering acceptable outcomes for less than half of our students. It’s a sin to waste money. It’s the biggest sin to waste lives.

Add to that expenditure the billions spent by parents and others to send children to regular class and extra lessons. No business could sustain that level of loss. No human being should have to tolerate such levels of disappointment. No society can thrive by normalizing this amount of failure.

A MORAL OBLIGATION

Helping others to thrive is, for religious persons and genuine humanists, the prime pursuit of morality. Effective education is a justice issue. God bless the hundreds of thousands who have thrived without formal education. They are the exceptions who do not prove the rule.

AN EFFORT AT CHANGE

Last week Prime Minister Mottley described the Caribbean education system as not fit for purpose. The challenge is to implement swift, affordable measures to reverse the rot. One such is a project called the 7th Grade Academy being piloted at Holy Trinity High School in Kingston where all but a handful of over 200 entering students are unable to read, compute or behave at required levels.

This academy for under-literate students is concentrated on character formation, literacy and numeracy, not the dozen more subjects prescribed for that grade. After 12 weeks, attendance, punctuality, parental buy-in, discipline, order, and respect have all shown signs of improvement. Reading levels have risen by an average grade level or more within a term.

To me the character formation emphasis is even more important than the other skills. It takes an ordered environment to encourage an ordered child who can be inspired to learn and to live responsibly.

The entire project and each child’s individual progress and behaviour are monitored rigorously and frequently. There are smaller classes, specially disposed teachers and a cooperative school administration. Longer hours of practice and engagement will be necessary too. Half the group need enough food to be able to concentrate.

A continuing revised curriculum will be required for Grade 8 if all the gains of the radical Grade 7 experiment are not to be lost. A similar project is beginning at Newell High School in St.Elizabeth.

OTHER SCHOOLS

This therapy is required in probably one hundred high schools and almost all of our primary schools where behaviour, reading and numeracy standards are below par. Grade 7 is too late. It makes no sense adding two years to the end of high school if the foundations of learning have not been achieved before. Automatic promotion has to stop now. Cabinet must prescribe.

If there is no swift and thoroughgoing change as PM Mottley and the World Bank urge, we will continue spending nearly one hundred billion dollars a year to achieve only disappointing and inadequate outcomes with catastrophic personal and national outcomes.

WHO SUPPORTS CHANGE?

More time is required for full proof of this concept. But time is not on our side. Witness our economic marasmus. Perhaps the biggest reason why the “five in four” growth promise has flopped and will continue to be elusive, is the low levels of literacy among the productive age-group of the population.

It is important to understand the sources of support for the 7th Grade Academy so far. This will give you an idea of who are the likely brokers of change in the society. Grace Baston and Faith Alexander are education professionals who have moved from the heights of the education pyramid to its base. Some teachers have shown no interest in the re-training, exertion, extra hours and personal commitment required. Others have given of themselves sacrificially. They must be cultured and incentivised

Great respect is due to Keith Duncan, Saffrey Brown and Project STAR; Jason Henzell and Breds Foundation who have supported the initiative even before the model was fully developed. Equally visionary have been Metry Seaga and Andrew Chin of the E-Learning Company. Others like Nevada Powe and his team; the S Hotel Foundation, Digicel Foundation and many individuals are contributing. Dr. Winsome Gordon of the Jamaica Teaching Council continues to be supportive as does Minister Morris Dixon. From experience, I know how difficult it is for the Ministry of Education to effect change.

TARGETS

The target is to move acceptable levels of literacy from three per cent of the cohort to 75 per cent in a year. This is ambitious but possible, and essential. A template of the ingredients, methodology, resources, assessment tools and costs have been developed. Last week alone, numbers of schools have been in touch to ask to be included in any scale-up of the project.

The programme is affordable, mostly within existing budget parameters if these are applied flexibly. The Managing Team is at the disposal of the Ministry, its Transformation Unit, the Opposition, Churches and all persons of goodwill with a view to expanding. And if there are other effective methodologies to attain the same objectives, let them be tried similarly.

Government’s cooperation will be essential but cannot be waited on indefinitely. Change is hard to achieve top-down. School owners, managers and parents must stop being resigned to failure.

NEW ZEAL

Do we really want to do something different? I think Dr Gilmore, Dr Johnston and myself are the surviving members of the National Literacy Board of the early 1970s when the zeal to reverse the era of mass illiteracy galvanised most Jamaicans around a common cause. What will it be now? Could any struggle be more consequential in 2025 and beyond, than for us to coalesce around the cause of educational reform and behaviour change?

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com